'_Ach mein Gott! wollen sie nur?_' and in return for a double handful of _confetti_ flung into a carriage full of German artists ahead of him, 'bang!' comes into Caper's vehicle a shower of lime pills and other stunners--not including the language--and he is in for it. A minute, and the whole Corso rains, hails, and pelts flowers and white pills; nothing else is visible: up there laugh down at them whole balconies, filled with delirious men and women, throwing on their devoted heads, American, French, German, rattling, tumbling, fistfuls of _confetti_ and wild flowers:--even that half head of lettuce was among the things flying! English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Germans, Italians, Americans, and those wild northern bloods--all grit and game--the Russians, are down on them like a thousand of bricks. Hurrah! the carriages move on--they are safe. Hurrah for a new fight with fresh faces! _Avanti!_ Comes a carriage load of wild Rustians. Ivan, the _mondjik_, fresh from the Nevskoi Prospekt, now drives for the first time in the Corso--_Dam na vodka, Sabakoutchelovek_, thinks he. Yes, my sweet son of a dog, thou shalt have _vodka_ to drink after all this scrimmage is over. So he holds in his horses with one hand, crowds down his fur hat with the other, so that his eyes will be safe; and then bravely faces the stinging shower of _confetti_ his lord and master draws down on him. Up on the back seat of this carriage, all life and fire, stands the Russian prince, with headpiece of mail and red surtout, a Carnival Circassian, 'down on' the slow-plodding Italians, and throwing himself away with flowers and fun. Isn't he a picture? how his blue eyes gleam, how his long, wavy moustache curls with the play of features! how the flowers fly--how the rubles fly for them! Look at the other Russians--there are beards for you! beards grown where brandy freezes! but, they are thawed out now. Look at these men: hear their wild northern tongue, how it rolls out the sounds that frighten Italians back to sleepy sonnets and voluptuous songs. Hurrah, my Russians! look fate in the face. _Your_ road is--onward! 'Ah, yes; and really, my dear'--here a handful of white pills and lime dust breaks the sentence--'really my dear, hadn't we better'--'bang!' comes a tough bouquet, and hits milady on that bonnet--'better go to the hotel?' 'Indeed, now,' milady continues, 'they don't respect persons, these low Italians. They haven't the faintest idea of dignity.'