But here we are at Schlüsselburg, and here is Prohoroff's house--a huge, rambling structure with bedrooms like barracks, but unprovided with the commonest of comforts, excepting beds, and having no apparatus for washing. Russians are quite free from that insular faddiness as to cold water which is a characteristic of us Britishers; they see no necessity for, and no virtue in, a washing-stand. As for a cold bath--_proh pudor_! What a dirty race they must be, think the Muscovites, who require a bath every morning! There was once a _savant_ who gave the following definition of water: "A colourless liquid which turns black when the human hands are placed in it." Was this learned man a joker? I cannot think a _savant_ would so demean himself; he must have been of Russian extraction and perfectly serious. However, I have lived long enough to learn the virtue of the saying, "_À la guerre, comme à la guerre!_" Therefore, in a foreign land, and in a strange house, when there are no facilities for washing, I philosophically go unwashed until an opportunity offers to repair the omission. So I went to bed and wished for day. In the morning a servant brought in a brown pudding dish and a tumbler of water. I sat down, in order to reflect calmly upon the possible uses of these articles. Was I expected to seat myself in the dish and pour the contents of the tumbler over me? I rejected the idea. Eventually I placed the pudding dish upon a chair, armed myself with the tumbler--and, by rigid economy, and the exercise of superhuman patience, succeeded in getting my face and neck wet and the palms of both hands damp. Enough; I am washed--now for breakfast and the ducks of Ladoga! When we sallied forth to embark upon the steam-launch and arrived at the water's edge, I did not see the vessel, and inquired of Prohoroff where it was. This was my good host's moment of triumph. "Why, there, just in front of your nose!" he said, laughing loudly and delightedly; "can't you see it?" He pointed to what I had imagined was a grove of young pine cover fringing a small island or promontory. Then I understood the mystery, and was glad that good-natured Prohoroff had succeeded so well in bringing off his great surprise. It was indeed the steam-launch; but so covered and hidden by pine boughs, and small pine trees fastened to the boat's side upright from the water's edge, that it really looked, as I have intimated, for all the world like a pine-grown island. Undoubtedly it was well done, and the ducks might easily be deluded by it, even as I had been.