After I had made an agreement for my board and lodging, both of which were very cheap (now St. Petersburg, is as dear as London), I brought some pieces of furniture which were necessaries for me, but which were not as yet much in use in Russia, such as a commode, a bureau, &c.

German is the language principally spoken in St. Petersburg, and I did not speak German much better then than I do now, so I had a good deal of difficulty in making myself understood, and usually excited my auditors to laughter.

After dinner my landlord told me that the Court was giving a masked ball to five thousand persons to last sixty hours.  He gave me a ticket, and told me I only needed to shew it at the entrance of the imperial palace.

I decided to use the ticket, for I felt that I should like to be present at so numerous an assembly, and as I had my domino still by me a mask was all I wanted.  I went to the palace in a sedan-chair, and found an immense crowd assembled, and dancing going on in several halls in each of which an orchestra was stationed.  There were long counters loaded with eatables and drinkables at which those who were hungry or thirsty ate or drank as much as they liked.  Gaiety and freedom reigned everywhere, and the light of a thousand wax candles illuminated the hall.  Everything was wonderful, and all the more so from its contrast with the cold and darkness that were without.  All at once I heard a masquer beside me say to another,—­

“There’s the czarina.”

We soon saw Gregory Orloff, for his orders were to follow the empress at a distance.

I followed the masquer, and I was soon persuaded that it was really the empress, for everybody was repeating it, though no one openly recognized her.  Those who really did not know her jostled her in the crowd, and I imagined that she would be delighted at being treated thus, as it was a proof of the success of her disguise.  Several times I saw her speaking in Russian to one masquer and another.  No doubt she exposed her vanity to some rude shocks, but she had also the inestimable advantage of hearing truths which her courtiers would certainly not tell her.  The masquer who was pronounced to be Orloff followed her everywhere, and did not let her out of his sight for a moment.  He could not be mistaken, as he was an exceptionally tall man and had a peculiar carriage of the head.

I arrested my progress in a hall where the French square dance was being performed, and suddenly there appeared a masquer disguised in the Venetian style.  The costume was so complete that I at once set him down as a fellow-countryman, for very few strangers can imitate us so as to escape detection.  As it happened, he came and stood next to me.

“One would think you were a Venetian,” I said to him in French.

“So I am.”

“Like myself.”

“I am not jesting.”

“No more am I.”

“Then let us speak in Venetian.”