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of good humor on the part of one whom it had been the
study of the count’s life to please, the old man danced
out, and let himself fall again, this time with comic
gestures. Renewed laughter. From that the aged
courtier devoted himself the whole evening to evoking
smiles from the lips of the august being by playing the
clown. While all this was going on, his daughter, the
present Countess O., one of the ladies in waiting to the
empress, sat straight and stiff, with contented mien and
a smile in her eye, swallowing her anger at her father’s
abasement, and really satisfied with the obvious favor
which fell to his lot. The scene reminds one of what
is immortalized in the well-known painting of the
court of the Tsaritsa Anna Ivanovna, which is widely
known in Russia by the copper-plate engraving, and in
which the members of the first families of Russia are
represented playing leap-frog in the ball-room of the
palace for the amusement of their sovereign lady.
Court life was far from being so spiritless as now in
the time of Alexander II. The court bigotry, so closely
connected with shallowness, was also unknown during
his time. Now you find large circles among the
aristocracy who belong to the Radstock-Pashkof sect, which
was founded not many years ago by an impostor. In
these circles they pass their time in reading “The
Evangelists,” damn all who don’t think as they do, and, above
all, pick their neighbors to pieces. Fanaticism and a
malicious propensity to gossip generally go hand in
hand here. A large part of the members of this stratum
of society send their sick to the priest Joan in Cronstadt,
whom they believe able to work miraculous cures
by the laying-on of hands. Even Loris Melikof sent a
daughter to him when she was ill.
The vigorous Greek-orthodox re-action in the highest
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