No one watching us would have believed any stories about food shortage in Petrograd.  I daresay at this very moment in Berlin they are having just such meals.  Until the last echo of the last Trump has died away in the fastnesses of the advancing mountains the rich will be getting from somewhere the things that they desire!  I have no memory of what we had to eat that night, but I know that it was all very magnificent and noisy, kind-hearted and generous and vulgar.  A great deal of wine was drunk, and by the end of the meal every one was talking as loudly as possible.  I had for companion the beautiful Mlle. Finisterre.  She had lived all her life in Petrograd, and she had a contempt for the citizens of that fine town worthy of Semyonov himself.  Opposite us sat a stout, good-natured Jewess, who was very happily enjoying her food.  She was certainly the most harmless being in creation, and was probably guilty of a thousand generosities and kindnesses in her private life.  Nevertheless, Mlle. Finisterre had for her a dark and sinister hatred, and the remarks that she made about her, in her bitter and piercing voice, must have reached their victim.  She also abused her host very roundly, beginning to tell me in the fullest detail the history of an especially unpleasant scandal in which he had notoriously figured.  I stopped her at last.

“It seems to me,” I said, “that it would be better not to say these things about him while you’re eating his bread and salt.”

She laughed shrilly, and tapped me on the arm with a bony finger.

“Oh, you English!... always so moral and strict about the proprieties... and always so hypercritical too.  Oh, you amuse me!  I’m French, you see—­not Russian at all; these poor people see through nothing—­but we French!”

After dinner there was a strange scene.  We all moved into the long, over-decorated drawing-room.  We sat about, admired the pictures (a beautiful one by Somoff I especially remember—­an autumn scene with eighteenth-century figures and colours so soft and deep that the effect was inexpressibly delicate and mysterious), talked and then fell into one of those Russian silences that haunt every Russian party.  I call those silences “Russian,” because I know nothing like them in any other part of the world.  It is as though the souls of the whole company suddenly vanished through the windows, leaving only the bodies and clothes.  Every one sits, eyes half closed, mouths shut, hands motionless, host and hostess, desperately abandoning every attempt at rescue, gaze about them in despair.

The mood may easily last well into the morning, when the guests, still silent, will depart, assuring everybody that they have enjoyed themselves immensely, and really believing that they have; or it may happen that some remark will suddenly be made, and instantly back through the windows the souls will come, eagerly catching up their bodies again, and a babel will arise, deafening, baffling, stupefying.  Or it may happen that a Russian will speak with sudden authority, almost like a prophet, and will continue for half an hour and more, pouring out his soul, and no one will dream of thinking it an improper exhibition.