Yegor Ivanitch looked round him quickly and flung up his hands.

“Why, where’s the needful . . . to warm us up?” he asked, looking in alarm first at the governor and then at the bishop.  “Your Excellency!  Your Holiness!  I’ll be bound, the ladies are frozen too!  We must have something, this won’t do!”

Everyone began gesticulating and declaring that they had not come to the skating to warm themselves, but the mayor, heeding no one, opened the door and beckoned to someone with his crooked finger.  A workman and a fireman ran up to him.

“Here, run off to Savatin,” he muttered, “and tell him to make haste and send here . . . what do you call it? . . .  What’s it to be?  Tell him to send a dozen glasses . . . a dozen glasses of mulled wine, the very hottest, or punch, perhaps. . . .”

There was laughter in the pavilion.

“A nice thing to treat us to!”

“Never mind, we will drink it,” muttered the mayor; “a dozen glasses, then . . . and some Benedictine, perhaps . . . and tell them to warm two bottles of red wine. . . .  Oh, and what for the ladies?  Well, you tell them to bring cakes, nuts . . . sweets of some sort, perhaps. . . .  There, run along, look sharp!”

The mayor was silent for a minute and then began again abusing the frost, banging his arms across his chest and thumping with his golosh boots.

“No, Yegor Ivanitch,” said the governor persuasively, “don’t be unfair, the Russian frost has its charms.  I was reading lately that many of the good qualities of the Russian people are due to the vast expanse of their land and to the climate, the cruel struggle for existence . . . that’s perfectly true!”

“It may be true, your Excellency, but it would be better without it.  The frost did drive out the French, of course, and one can freeze all sorts of dishes, and the children can go skating—­ that’s all true!  For the man who is well fed and well clothed the frost is only a pleasure, but for the working man, the beggar, the pilgrim, the crazy wanderer, it’s the greatest evil and misfortune.  It’s misery, your Holiness!  In a frost like this poverty is twice as hard, and the thief is more cunning and evildoers more violent.  There’s no gainsaying it!  I am turned seventy, I’ve a fur coat now, and at home I have a stove and rums and punches of all sorts.  The frost means nothing to me now; I take no notice of it, I don’t care to know of it, but how it used to be in old days, Holy Mother!  It’s dreadful to recall it!  My memory is failing me with years and I have forgotten everything; my enemies, and my sins and troubles of all sorts—­I forget them all, but the frost—­ough!  How I remember it!  When my mother died I was left a little devil—­this high—­ a homeless orphan . . . no kith nor kin, wretched, ragged, little clothes, hungry, nowhere to sleep—­in fact, ’we have here no abiding city, but seek the one to come.’  In those days I used to lead an old blind woman about the town for five kopecks