A troika is a superb affair.  It makes the tiny sledges which take the place of cabs, and are used for all ordinary purposes, look even more like toys than usual.  But the sledges are great fun, and so cheap that it is an extravagance to walk.  A course costs only twenty kopecks—­ten cents.  The sledges are set so low that you can reach out and touch the snow with your hand, and they are so small that the horse is in your lap and the coachman in your pocket.  He simply turns in his seat to hook the fur robe to the back of your seat—­only it has no back.  If you fall, you fall clear to the ground.

The horse is far, far above you in your humble position, and there is so little room that two people can with difficulty stow themselves in the narrow seat.  If a brother and sister or a husband and wife drive together, the man, in sheer self-defence, is obliged to put his arm around the woman, no matter how distasteful it may be.  Not that she would ever be conscious of whether he did it or not, for the amount of clothes one is obliged to wear in Russia destroys any sense of touch.

The idvosjik, or coachman, is so bulky from this same reason that you cannot see over him.  You are obliged to crane your neck to one side.  His head is covered with a Tartar cap.  He wears his hair down to his collar, and then chopped off in a straight line.  His pelisse is of a bluish gray, fits tightly to the waist, and comes to the feet.  But the skirt of it is gathered on back and front, giving him an irresistibly comical pannier effect, like a Dolly Varden polonaise.  The Russian idvosjik guides his horse curiously.  He coaxes it forward by calling it all sorts of pet names—­“doushka,” darling, etc.  Then he beats it with a toy whip, which must feel like a fly on its woolly coat, for all the little fat pony does is to kick up its heels and fly along like the wind, missing the other sledges by a hair’s-breadth.  It is ghostly to see the way they glide along without a sound, for the sledges wear no bells.

One may drive with perfect safety at a breakneck pace, for they all drive down on one side of the street and up on the other.  Nor will an idvosjik hesitate to use his whip about the head and face of another idvosjik who dares to turn without crossing the street.

He stops his horse with a guttural trill, as if one should say “Tr-r-r-r-r” in the back of the throat.  It sounds like a gargle.

The horses are sharp-shod, but in a way quite different from ours.  The spikes on their shoes are an inch long, and dig into the ice with perfect security, but it makes the horses look as if they wore French heels.  Even over ice like sheer glass they go at a gallop and never slip.  It is wonderful, and the exhilaration of it is like driving through an air charged with champagne, like the wine-caves of Rintz.

Our troika was like a chariot in comparison with these sledges.  It was gorgeously upholstered in red velvet, and held six—­three on each seat.  The robes also were red velvet, bordered and lined with black bear fur.  There were three horses driven abreast.  The middle horse was much larger than the other two, and wore a high white wooden collar, which stood up from the rest of the harness, and was hung with bells and painted with red flowers and birds.