Our position in Finland offers sometimes amusing experiences. I remember my poor husband's trouble at Helsingfors. At that time he was attached {187} to the Grand Duke Nicolas (father of the present Grand Duke), who was always very kind to him. In meeting his chief at Helsingfors he was invited to come to lunch on the same day. At the appointed time, having put on all his decorations and the appropriate uniform, he went out into the street and tried to get a cab. He saw many vacant vehicles one after the other, and made desperate signs to make them stop, all in vain. Not even the policeman seemed to understand what the poor General tried to explain. Will you believe it!--Novikoff entirely missed his appointment because they all pretended that they could not understand a word of Russian. I confess my husband's distress amused me, but his helplessness seemed so incredible that I only saw its funny side at the time--whilst in reality it certainly possessed also a very serious side. It was always pleasing and interesting to me to feel and to know that my old friend Kinglake and my dear brother Alexander, though they did not then know each other personally, were linked together by a common opinion on a subject they both took very deeply to heart: the subject of duels. Kinglake could never pardon the Duke of Wellington the abolition of duelling in the British Army. Personally, having always felt very strongly against every kind of violence or bloodshed, I found his point of view very difficult to understand, and often tried to investigate more profoundly the ethics of the question. "Do you really mean," I said to Kinglake one day, "that it is right and justifiable for people to {188} attack each other, sometimes for the flimsiest reasons, as is so often done in Germany, just for the fun of the thing--while the tragic little game, as often as not, ends in the death of one of the combatants?" "That is so," said Kinglake seriously; "but the possibility of a duel ennobles the spirit of a country, is an education in manners, and results in the development of a kind of moral _muscle_."