eaning, I am only amazed that they, all the men, do
not come to the condition of the "golden squad," of which Moscow is full,
{152a} [and the women to the state of the one whom I had seen near my
house]. {152b}

Thus I walked along, and scrutinized these factory-hands, as long as they
roamed the streets, which was until eleven o'clock. Then their movements
began to calm down. Some drunken men remained here and there, and here
and there I encountered men who were being taken to the station-house.
And then carriages began to make their appearance on all sides, directing
their course toward one point.

On the box sits a coachman, sometimes in a sheepskin coat; and a footman,
a dandy, with a cockade. Well-fed horses in saddle-cloths fly through
the frost at the rate of twenty versts an hour; in the carriages sit
ladies muffled in round cloaks, and carefully tending their flowers and
head-dresses. Every thing from the horse-trappings, the carriages, the
gutta-percha wheels, the cloth of the coachman's coat, to the stockings,
shoes, flowers, velvet, gloves, and perfumes,--every thing is made by
those people, some of whom often roll drunk into their dens or sleeping-
rooms, and some stay with disreputable women in the night-lodging houses,
while still others are put in jail. Thus past them in all their work,
and over them all, ride the frequenters of balls; and it never enters
their heads, that there is any connection between these balls to which
they make ready to go, and these drunkards at whom their coachman shouts
so roughly.

These people enjoy themselves at the ball with the utmost composure of
spirit, and assurance that they are doing nothing wrong, but something
very good. Enjoy themselves! Enjoy themselves from eleven o'clock until
six in the morning, in the very dead of night, at the very hour when
people are tossing and turning with empty stomachs in the night-lodging
houses, and while some are dying, as did the laundress.

Their enjoyment consists in this,--that the women and young girls, having
bared their necks and arms, and applied bustles behind, place themselves
in a situation in which no uncorrupted woman or maiden would care to
display herself to a man, on any consideration in the world; and in this
half-naked condition, with their uncovered bosoms exposed to view, with
arms bare to the shoulder, with a bustle behind and tightly swathed hips,
under the most brilliant light, women and maidens, whose