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The first time it was in this wise: There exists in St. Petersburg a
Ladies' Artistic Circle, which meets once a week all winter, to draw
from models. Social standing as well as artistic talent is requisite in
members of this society, to which two or three Grand Duchesses have
belonged, or do belong. The product of their weekly work, added to gifts
from each member, is exhibited, sold, and raffled for each spring, the
proceeds being devoted to helping needy artists by purchasing for them
canvas, paints, and so forth, to clothing and educating their children,
or aiding them in a dozen different ways, such as paying house-rent,
doctor's bills, pensions, and so forth, to the amount of a great many
thousand dollars every year. When I was in Petersburg, the exhibitions
took place in the ballroom and drawing-room of one grand ducal palace,
while the home and weekly meetings were in the palace of the Grand
Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna, now dead. An amiable poet, Yakoff
Petrovitch, invited me to attend one of these meetings,--a number of
men being honorary members, though the women manage everything
themselves,--but illness prevented my accompanying him on the evening
appointed for our visit. He told me, therefore, to keep my invitation
card. Three months elapsed before circumstances permitted me to use it.

One evening, on my way from an informal call of farewell on a friend who
was about to set out for the Crimea, I ordered my _izvostchik_ to drive
me to the Michael Palace. We were still at some distance from the palace
when a policeman spoke to the _izvostchik_, who drove on instead of
turning that corner, as he had been on the point of doing.

"Why don't you go on up that street?" I asked.

"Impossible! Probably the _Hosudar_ [Emperor] is coming," answered
cabby.

"Whither is he going?"

"We don't know," replied cabby, in true Russian style.

"But I mean to go to that palace, all the same," said I.

"Of course," said cabby tranquilly, turning up the next parallel street,
which brought us out on the square close to the palace.

As we drove into the courtyard I was surprised to see that it was filled
with carriages, that the plumed chasseurs of ambassadors and footmen in
court liveries were flitting to and fro, and that the great flight of
steps leading to the grand entrance was dotted thickly with officers and
gendarmes, exactly as though an imperial birthday _Te Deum_ at St.
Isaac's Cathedral were i