“I remember once when we were snowed in, stuck fast between two stations--post-stations, you understand--flakes as big as swans’ wings falling, falling, falling in a dense curtain. Four of my children were almost infants then, eight and nine years old, I think. Let me see, was it the twins?... I can’t remember; perhaps Zina and Dimitri, Nikola and Sônitzkà; it does not matter, however. Anyhow, they were asleep in their father’s traveling-carriage, at full length, so that he had to get out and join me and the girls--four of them, mind you--that made six of us pressed together like sardines, eating on our laps from the provision-baskets, and swallowing red-hot tea brewed by the chief of our kitchens beneath a lean-to of pine branches in the very throat of the tempest. Behind the _berline_ the maid’s rumble was getting full of snow. It was droll! You must understand the _berline_ was honeycombed with drawers and receptacles, and there were supplementary sacks of leather attached everywhere. As to my ‘sleeper,’ it did not boast so many appendages and _cachettes_; it was much lighter, and lined with--what do you think?--with rose-colored satin--a conceit of my poor husband. It had served us on our honeymoon. And that night he was in a vile humor, thanks to the fact that for the first time in his existence he had been deprived of his indispensable _rastigaï_--marrow-filled _patés_--since you do not know Russian, Princess. Oh, but we had ices!... Don’t laugh, Basil-Vassilièvitch! That cook was a pearl, and with the aid of essences of various fruits and powdered nuts, of which he always took a quantity along, he manufactured a sort of Nesselrode in little moulds. Delicious they were, too, but they did not appease my poor husband’s wrath concerning those _rastigaï_. He told the butler some impatient things when he brought the Nesselrode shapes on a frozen tray, and repented afterward, for he was consummately golden-hearted. I recall that he gave him ten _rubles_--gold--the next morning. We left the _berline_ to the girls after that, and took refuge, he and I, in my ‘sleeper.’ He became quite too amiable then, poor fellow, also he was very handsome, an all-conquering mustache--a leg!--men wore knee-breeches still--but I was adamant. I had to punish him for his previous evil mood, and so I threatened to send him to sleep in the cook’s shelter. Ah, the days of our youth ... how often we regret them!”