Herr Grabe, who had risen, and was
overhauling a pile of Russian arid foreign papers,
suddenly advanced towards me, his stolid eyes
beaming with pleasure, and waving in his podgy
hand a long flimsy blue playbill.

"Hurrah! mein Herr Goodman," said he,
"here is for you a great opportunity; here is
our last Gipsy Concert—the last of the season
—our wonderful song-gifted gipsies' concert;
they sing and dance to-morrow at the Hermitage
Gardens. It is a great opportunity, for the
winter has now begun, and a day later you
might have missed them. They are miraculous
mimics; they are dancers of genius; they sing
—Himmel, how they sing!"

At seven o'clock the next night a jolting roll
through the suburbs and boulevards, the dry
leaves rustling under our wheels, brought us to
the great iron gate of the Hermitage—a gate
crowned with coloured lamps.

The Hermitage is a sort of Cremorne—a
pleasure-garden for summer use; like Cremorne
suburban, and formerly the property of a
nobleman. It has a pretty little domain, with a
miniature lake and a sprinkling of good trees.
It has little curtained alcoves for supping in,
and a bar-room for wine and "grogs."

So far I could see at a glance as I threaded
the wicket, paid for my ticket, and walked down
the long scantily-lit garden-path, lured on by
distant music that indicated some central source
of amusement. Herr Grabe followed me with
stolid enthusiasm, full of metaphysical meditations
upon the price of hemp, like a good
philosophical German merchant as he was.

Hurrying people passed us; not fantastic
students, or prattling grisettes, but quiet, staid
people, intensely grave and respectable,
incapable of mercurial movement, or tumultuous
gaiety. Dance! There was no dancing in
them.

"Where is the dancing platform:" I said to
Herr Grabe.

"Dance?" said Herr Grabe, with horror:
"the government allows no dancing here. We
are not civilised enough to dance in public."

Oh, the blessings of a paternal government!
What can dancing have to do with politics?
Can one be waltzed into republicanism, or
pirouetted into Polish principles?

Fading trees do not look well when lit by dim
lamps and tin reflectors like dish-covers. There
is a dingy gaiety about half-dead trees, seen by
an artificial illumination, that makes one think
of theatrical forests, side-scenes, and footlights.
A garden of Alcinous, on a cold autumn night,
with rather a severe fresh wind sighing about
the dead leaves, and turning them over, as if
in search of some one put out of the way
and hidden underneath, is not the most
seductive of places, without some strong inducement
to lead you there and keep you there
when you are entrapped.

We took our seats in a sort of open-air
proprietary chapel, facing an orchestra, and with
our backs to a refreshment-counter. There
were long rows of seats, with a walk down the
centre between them. It was rather a cold
night, and second-rate music is not warming,
however noisy it may be. Some officers near
me drew their fur-lined cloaks closer round
them, with a suffering shrug; the ladies
huddled together, like fowls on a perch on a
winter's night.

The musicians were like any other musicians
in Paris or London. Evening dress is not
capable of much variety. From the leader
downwards the band degenerated in perspective,
till the player on the big drum in the
background grew positively shabby. With long-
suffering patience we bore the short gusts of
music.

Weary of staring at the orchestra, I turned
my eyes to the decorations, and they were not
altogether despicable—superior to Cremorne,
and all such modern Vauxhalls, but inferior to
the tasteful variety of a Paris illumination.

There were some green metal aloes with
broad, well-modelled leaves, wide and flapping
as elephants' ears—such plants as grow in
Indian jungles, and conceal tigers' dens and the
lairs of enormous snakes. They stood on high
pedestals above the flower-beds; the starry,
branching flowers were formed by little jets of
gas; the pure and brilliant flame blossoming
naturally enough into flowers. A prettier night
ornament could scarcely be imagined.

Suddenly a dark figure stole thievishly along
the pasteboard battlement that formed the
façade of the Music Theatre. Satan entering
Eden could not have striven harder for ambush
in order to avoid the angelic spears. Little
lamps of a luminous violet colour were first
lit by this dexterous climber; they were
followed by rows of burning topazes and glow-
worm-coloured lights, and radiant rubies, and
little cups of bluish moonlight, that the envious
and struggling wind kept in a restless flicker,
and every now and then, in a fit of irrestrainable
petulance, blew into total darkness.

The black hand passed over them with the
nimble flame, and brushed them back again into
light. And, all this time, the chilly concert went
on, and the dry leaves blew about inquiringly,
and the dull visitors patrolled, and the coquettish
blondes laughed and drank tea, or sipped
sticky liqueurs, and talked of the gipsies.

I do not think there is much real taste for
music in Russia. People talk too much at the
Opera. Everything is French, German, and
Italian, and what is not one of these three is bad
—I mean, in the fashionable world only, for the
native and Cossack airs are very wild, sad, and
original, and the peasants are passionately fond
of them. A spurious and half-learned civilisation
seems to paralyse for a time in Russia the natural
instincts of taste.

On went those black-clad automatons with
their mechanical playing, doling out by the bar,
without feeling or passion, the beautiful
serenade in Don Juan, the wizard waltz in Faust,
the majestic wedding-march of Mendelssohn.

But suddenly the band broke into life, and
thundered out with the fire and exactitude that