We set out just as a cannon shot from the citadel announced the close of day.  It was towards the end of May, in which month there is literally no night at St. Petersburg.  Without the report of the cannon no one would be able to tell when the day ended and the night began.  One can read a letter at midnight, and the moonlight makes no appreciable difference.  This continual day lasts for eight weeks, and during that time no one lights a candle.  At Moscow it is different; a candle is always necessary at midnight if one wished to read.

We reached Novgorod in forty-eight hours, and here the chevochic allowed us a rest of five hours.  I saw a circumstance there which surprised me very much, though one has no business to be surprised at anything if one travels much, and especially in a land of half savages.  I asked the chevochic to drink, but he appeared to be in great melancholy.  I enquired what was the matter, and he told Zaira that one of his horses had refused to eat, and that it was clear that if he could not eat he could not work.  We followed him into the stable, and found the horse looking oppressed by care, its head lowered and motionless; it had evidently got no appetite.  His master began a pathetic oration, looking tenderly at the animal, as if to arouse it to a sense of duty, and then taking its head, and kissing it lovingly, he put it into the manger, but to no purpose.  Then the man began to weep bitterly, but in such a way that I had the greatest difficulty to prevent myself laughing, for I could see that he wept in the hope that his tears might soften the brute’s heart.  When he had wept some time he again put the horse’s head into the manger, but again to no purpose.  At this he got furious and swore to be avenged.  He led the horse out of the stable, tied it to a post, and beat it with a thick stick for a quarter of an hour so violently that my heart bled for the poor animal.  At last the chevochic was tired out, and taking the horse back to the stable he fastened up his head once more, and to my astonishment it began to devour its provender with the greatest appetite.  At this the master jumped for joy, laughed, sang, and committed a thousand extravagancies, as if to shew the horse how happy it had made him.  I was beside myself with astonishment, and concluded that such treatment would have succeeded nowhere but in Russia, where the stick seems to be the panacea or universal medicine.

They tell me, however, that the stick is gradually going out of fashion.  Peter the Great used to beat his generals black and blue, and in his days a lieutenant had to receive with all submission the cuffs of his captain, who bent before the blows of his major, who did the same to his colonel, who received chastisement from his general.  So I was informed by old General Woyakoff, who was a pupil of Peter the Great, and had often been beaten by the great emperor, the founder of St. Petersburg.