Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

FLOWERS IN RUSSIA.275

There presided throughout the fete, which, was smaller than the preceding ones, a species of splendid disorder that struck me more than the pomp of all the others. Without speaking of the comical constraint depicted on the countenances of certain parties who were obliged, for a time, to affect rural simplicity, it was a soiree altogether original, a species of Imperial Tivoli, where people felt themselves almost free, although in presence of an absolute master. The sovereign wdio enjoys himself seems no longer a despot, and this evening the emperor enjoyed himself.

The excessive heats of the present summer had fortunately favoured the design of the duchess» Her summer-house is situated in the most beautiful part of the Islands, and it was in the midst of a garden radiant with flowers (in pots), and upon an English grass-plot — another marvel here — that she had fixed her dancing saloon. This was a superb inlaid flooring, surrounded by elegant balustrades, richly embellished with flowers, and to which the sky served as ceiling. In Petersburg the luxury of rare flowers, reared in the hot-house, supplies the place of trees. Its inhabitants — men who have left Asia to imprison themselves among the snows of the north — recollect the oriental luxury of their earlier country, and do their best to supply the sterility of nature, which, left to herself, pi`oduces only pine and birch trees. Art raises here an infinite vai·iety of shrubs and plants; for as every tiling is artificial, it is just as easy to grow the exotic flowers of America as the violets and lilacs of France.

The empress, delicate as she is, danced, with her neck bare and her head uncovered, every polonaise