Long carriages for promenade, drawn by the most beautiful horses, conducted us, after dinner, into the park.  It was now the end of August, but the sun was pale, the grass of an almost artificial green, because it was only kept up by unremitting attention.  The flowers themselves appeared to be an aristocratic enjoyment, so much expense was required to have them.  No warbling of birds was heard in the woods, they did not trust themselves to this summer of a moment; neither were any cattle observable in the meadows:  one could not dare to give them plants which had required such pains to cultivate.  The water scarcely flowed, and only by the help of machines which brought it into the gardens, where the whole of this nature had the air of being a festival decoration, which would disappear when the guests retired.  Our caliches stopped in front of a building in the garden, which represented a Tartar camp; there, all the musicians united began a new concert:  the noise of horns and cymbals quite intoxicated the ideas.  The better to complete this entire banishment of thinking, we had an imitation, during summer, of their sledges, the rapidity of which consoles the Russians for their winter; we rolled upon boards, from the top of a mountain in wood with the quickness of lightning.  This amusement charmed the ladies as much as the gentlemen, and allowed them to participate a little in those pleasures of war, which consist in the emotion of danger, and in the animated promptitude of all the movements.  Thus passed the time; for every day saw a renewal of what appeared to me to be a fete.  With some slight differences, the greater part of the great houses of Petersburg lead the same kind of life:  it is impossible, as one may readily see, for any kind of continued conversation to be kept up in it, and learning is of no utility in this kind of society; but where so much is done only from the desire of collecting in one’s house a great multitude of persons, entertainments are after all the only means of preventing the ennui which a crowd in the saloons always creates.

In the midst of all this noise, is there any room for love? will be asked by the Italian ladies, who scarcely know any other interest in society than the pleasure of seeing the person by whom they wish to be beloved.  I passed too short a time at Petersburg to obtain correct ideas of the interior arrangements of families; it appeared to me, however, that on one hand, there was more domestic virtue than was said to exist; but that on the other hand, sentimental love was very rarely known.  The customs of Asia, which meet you at every step, prevent the females from interfering with the domestic cares of their establishment:  all these are directed by the husband, and the wife only decorates herself with his gifts, and receives the persons whom he invites.  The respect for morality is already much greater than it was at Petersburg in the time of those emperors and empresses who depraved