"It has gradually been borne in upon me that the climate of this region is almost ideal. The sky is deep blue and far off, yet the heat is never really oppressive, on account of a constant breeze which brings balsam from the woods. For the landscape a finer contrast could scarcely be found to the Southern Steppe, which is like the burnt and scraped bottom of a pot. It has a character of its own, of course. From the fact of being usually able to see to the level horizon in all directions, it reminds one of the sea, while in summer the heated and quivering air which rises from the ground produces marvellous atmospheric effects; but there is always a wind, skin-drying and far from healthy. Here, on the other hand, we are well watered and surrounded by deep and lordly forest, and the aspect of the whole country is _riant_. "I have not yet seen much of the _kirchliches Wesen_. The priest at Osipoffka, I gathered, is a man who has to get in a mass as often as he is sober enough. The Abaméleks do not receive him, and never go to Church while there. In any case, I do not think the Princess is particularly _dévote_. She is of Polish descent, and her family having given up Western Catholicism, have never become, I suppose, enthusiastic as Russian orthodox. "Of the children the boy is much the most interesting. The eldest girl, though not without promise of beauty, is at present in a somewhat gaping and lumbering stage. The younger one is much smaller, though only a little younger than her sister, also of better intelligence, if worse temper. She laughs with a curious _abandon_ and is full of _câlineries_, and is two totally different persons when pleased and bored. "Master Paul has not the faintest resemblance that I can trace to either of them. He is an exceptionally round-limbed and well-made child, with low forehead and hair like dead-black fur showing a dead-white skin between, tending to stand up though perfectly soft, and always with a backward sweep, as though he had lately stood facing a high wind; beady brown eyes, clear brown colour, delicate little nose and chin and a mouth like a cherry, make up a face which is no false promise of his vivacity of temperament. It changes in the hundredth part of a second from bubbling laughter to a sort of Last Judgment seriousness. "He wags his little _tête de Polichinelle_ over his victuals, and converses with them in several languages. Sometimes his mother interrupts him and asks if he knows what he is saying, when he swears that he hasn't spoken for a quarter of an hour. _Pauvre petit bijou_ she calls him."