I resolved to
make no change in the customs of a house that was not my own, and to
look for another lodging.

In one of my first expeditions I called on the Countess Strogonoff,
the wife of my good old friend. I found her hoisted on the top of some
very high affair which did nothing but rock to and fro. I could not
imagine how she could endure this perpetual motion, but she wanted it
for her health, as she was unable to walk. But this did not prevent
her being agreeable to me. I spoke to her of the embarrassment I was
in on account of lodgings. She at once told me she had a pretty house
that was not occupied, and begged me to accept it, but because she
would hear nothing of my paying a rent, I positively declined the
offer. Seeing that her efforts were in vain, she sent for her
daughter, who was very pretty, and asked me to paint this young
person's portrait in payment of rent, to which I agreed with pleasure.
Thus, a few days later, I settled in a house where I hoped to find
quiet, since I was to live there alone.

So soon as I was established in my new dwelling, I visited the town as
often as the rigours of the season would permit. For during the five
months I spent at Moscow, the snow never melted; it deprived me of the
pleasure of seeing the environments, said to be admirable.

Moscow is at least ten miles round. The Moskva cuts through the town,
and is joined by two other small streams, and it is really an
astonishing sight--all those palaces, those finely sculptured public
monuments, those convents, those churches, all intermingled with
pretty landscapes and villages. This mixture of urban magnificence
and rural simplicity produces an extraordinary, fantastic effect,
which must please the traveller who is in search of something new. The
churches are so numerous in this city that a popular saying runs:
"Moscow with its forty times forty churches." Moscow is supposed to
contain 420,000 inhabitants, and commerce must be on a large scale,
because in a single quarter, whose name I have forgotten, there are
six thousand shops. In the quarter called the Kremlin there stands the
fortress of the same name, the old palace of the czars. This fortress
is as ancient as the town, said to have been built about the middle of
the twelfth century, and is situated on an elevation at the foot of
which flows the Moskva, but there is nothing remarkable in the style
excepting its antiquity. Close to this pile, whose walls are flanke