But in the character of Count Mierowitz, there was something of the rough and hardy country gentleman. He it was who caught with his own hands, and in his own forests by the Louga, the famous team of brown bears which, in the marriage procession of the late Empress Elizabeth's jester, drew that jocular personage and his bride, when the newly-wedded couple proceeded to the wonderful palace of ice (which was built on the frozen Neva), all the ornaments of which were icicles, and the appurtenances of which were also ice, even to the cannon which were fired, and did not burst. "When Peter the Great came to the throne," said he, one day, "he found only two lawyers in all Russia; so, Captain Balgonie, he hung one as an example to the other. Ah, he was a truly great man, Peter! The English admire him solely because he tried to imitate them; but, for that very reason, we don't approve of many of his innovations. We look from the north and south sides of the same hedge." It is not surprising that Charlie Balgonie preferred the society of two beautiful young girls to that of a testy old boyar. To enhance their natural attractions and winning manners, they were always dressed in the most fashionable French _mode_, and wore the rich stuffs which came from Moscow, and even from China. They and he had many topics in common, on which they could converse, after old Count Mierowitz had dined and dozed off to sleep--such as the theatre erected some years before at Yaroslaff, by Volkoff, whose troupe were now performing the tragedies of Soumorokoff at St. Petersburg, where a government theatre had just been erected by a ukase; while another ennobled the manager, Volkoff, who had died last year, after appearing at Moscow in Zelmira. Their knowledge of French and German opened up the best literature of Europe to the two cousins, which was fortunate; for at the period of our narrative, Russia had almost none, save some barbarous national songs, fabulous ecclesiastical records, and ferocious traditions: nor is she now much advanced in letters, though certainly, two months after publication, Charles Dickens may be read at Tobolsk--that terrible Tobolsk--where, as we have all read in our youth, Elizabeth wept such grateful tears on the bosom of her Smoloff. Exiled from court, and secluded amid these forests by the Louga, a Russian lady had few resources for amusement then; so the unexpected visit of Captain Balgonie, with whose name and courage they were quite familiar, proved a most welcome and fortunate circumstance to those two handsome girls, who were merely enduring life, or simply vegetating, in the great old mansion of Count Mierowitz.