It is only in the houses of noblemen that the stoves are refuelled twice a day, because servants are strictly forbidden to close the valve, and for a very good reason.

If a gentleman chance to come home and order his servants to warm his room before he goes to bed, and if the servant is careless enough to close the valve before the wood is reduced to charcoal, then the master sleeps his last sleep, being suffocated in three or four hours.  When the door is opened in the morning he is found dead, and the poor devil of a servant is immediately hanged, whatever he may say.  This sounds severe, and even cruel; but it is a necessary regulation, or else a servant would be able to get rid of his master on the smallest provocation.

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.