I found the princess mourning for the loss of her husband.  She welcomed me kindly, and promised to speak to M. Panin on my behalf; and three days later she wrote to me that I could call on that nobleman as soon as I liked.  This was a specimen of the empress’s magnanimity; she had disgraced the princess, but she allowed her favourite minister to pay his court to her every evening.  I have heard, on good authority, that Panin was not the princess’s lover, but her father.  She is now the President of the Academy of Science, and I suppose the literati must look upon her as another Minerva, or else they would be ashamed to have a woman at their head.  For completeness’ sake the Russians should get a woman to command their armies, but Joan d’Arcs are scarce.

Melissino and I were present at an extraordinary ceremony on the Day of the Epiphany, namely the blessing of the Neva, then covered with five feet of ice.

After the benediction of the waters children were baptized by being plunged into a large hole which had been made in the ice.  On the day on which I was present the priest happened to let one of the children slip through his hands.

“Drugoi!” he cried.

That is, “Give me another.”  But my surprise may be imagined when I saw that the father and mother of the child were in an ecstasy of joy; they were certain that the babe had been carried straight to heaven.  Happy ignorance!

I had a letter from the Florentine Madame Bregonci for her friend the Venetian Roccolini, who had left Venice to go and sing at the St. Petersburg Theatre, though she did not know a note of music, and had never appeared on the stage.  The empress laughed at her, and said she feared there was no opening in St. Petersburg for her peculiar talents, but the Roccolini, who was known as La Vicenza, was not the woman to lose heart for so small a check.  She became an intimate friend of a Frenchwoman named Prote, the wife of a merchant who lived with the chief huntsman.  She was at the same time his mistress and the confidante of his wife Maria Petrovna, who did not like her husband, and was very much obliged to the Frenchwoman for delivering her from the conjugal importunities.

This Prote was one of the handsomest women I have ever seen, and undoubtedly the handsomest in St. Petersburg at that time.  She was in the flower of her age.  She had at once a wonderful taste for gallantry and for all the mysteries of the toilette.  In dress she surpassed everyone, and as she was witty and amusing she captivated all hearts.  Such was the woman whose friend and procuress La Vicenza had become.  She received the applications of those who were in love with Madame Prote, and passed them on, while, whether a lover’s suit was accepted or not, the procuress got something out of him.

I recognized Signora Roccolini as soon as I saw her, but as twenty years had elapsed since our last meeting she did not wonder at my appearing not to know her, and made no efforts to refresh my memory.  Her brother was called Montellato, and he it was who tried to assassinate me one night in St. Mark’s Square, as I was leaving the Ridotto.  The plot that would have cost me my life, if I had not made my escape from the window, was laid in the Roccolini’s house.