The journey to Doubrovo proved to be a tedious business. We had to leave the railway behind; a coach drive of some fifty miles awaited us. We drove along a flat and somewhat desolate country road. The sun grew hot and so did I. Clouds of dust pursued us, and swarms of big flies attacked us; we chased them away with branches cut from the trees. A drive of four hours under such conditions is a prostrating experience! I spent a splendid time in Doubrovo with my cousin, Nelly Galitzine, and was sorry to leave her. When I got back home, Sergy suggested a trip on the Volga, which I accepted with enthusiasm. We went by train to Nijni-Novgorod, where we had to take the steamer. We arrived at Nijni at about seven o’clock in the morning. I hid myself in my coupé from the military authorities who had come to greet my husband on the platform, but was dragged from my retreat by an officer, who insisted upon my following him into the state apartments of the station opened for us. I was half inclined to crawl under the seat, but there was no escape possible, and, conquering my impulse to flee, with tangled hair and unwashed face, horribly ashamed of myself, I had to walk with such dignity as my disordered condition would permit between two rows of brilliant sons of Mars. General Korevo, the chief of the division stationed at Nijni and its outskirts, offered me his arm and led me to his carriage to drive to the pier. We took passage on a small steamer belonging to the company of “Caucasus and Mercury,” and steamed down the Volga from Nijni to Kazan. In the beginning of our voyage, where the Oka flows into the Volga, the river is in many places half a mile broad. We glided between sandy and sterile banks. Towards evening we arrived at Simbrisk, where we were to pass the night. A rickety old cab drove us to the hotel creeping up the ill-paved hill of an old and dirty street. A shabby waiter showed us into a small room with one bed and a greasy sofa. There was a tournament of self-denial between Sergy and me about the bed, and as neither would give in we decided that we should toss a coin: heads, the bed—tails, the sofa. It came tails, and the sofa fell to my lot! It was not at all a bed of roses, and when I lay down I soon discovered that the repulsive sofa was the property of certain highly disreputable and painfully disagreeable insects. I tossed on my couch of torture until morning.