Not especially refreshed by this resting-place, but in unruffled good spirits, we continued our journey the following morning in order to reach our next stop, Kutais, the capital of the province of the same name. There another messenger from the Mingrelian family was also awaiting us—the young prince’s intendant, a portly, tumultuous Armenian, who likewise could speak broken French, and wore the European dress. He conducted us to the best inn of Kutais; this was certainly not a palace hotel either, but might be so regarded in comparison with the hole where we had been the day before, for here each guest had his own washbasin and even his own towel, and the rooms and beds were clean. But everything we saw and heard—and smelt—seemed to us so terribly exotic: the strange types of people, the strange costumes, the strange architecture of the buildings, and—as to the sense of smell—a quite peculiar and not disagreeable odor of sundried buffalo dung. The buffaloes themselves, which are used here to draw loads and as milch cattle, and which we had already seen idling in sundry mudholes on our way to Kutais, were an exotic phenomenon to us.
The heat was frightful. One could hardly endure it in the rooms, and we spent our days and took our meals (consisting of mutton, mutton, mutton) on a wooden balcony which ran around the house over the court.
After two days our Armenian took his departure, and a third messenger came to be our guardian and protector. This time it was a family friend of the Dadianis, an old French nobleman de vieille roche, with the fine manners de l’ancien régime. His name was Comte de Rosmorduc. Born in Bretagne, he had come to the Caucasus some twenty-five years before (for what reason I do not know) and had settled down there for good. He had married a Mingrelian woman, and owned a house which he had himself built at Zugdidi. He was a welcome associate of the princess and her children, and later became a dear friend of ours also.
He now did us the honors of Kutais. He introduced us at the home of General Zeretelli, the foremost house in the city. The Zeretellis were Caucasians and relatives of the Dadianis. They showed themselves very obliging, even arranging for a great reception in our honor on the following evening, to which all the notabilities and aristocratic families of the place were invited. The daughter, Nina, was a famous beauty, but as she was twenty-five she was regarded already as an old maid. Girls in the Caucasus usually marry at fifteen or sixteen. The Countess Rosmorduc, who was then thirty-five, had been married for twenty years. She also was a great beauty; but we did not make her acquaintance until the next year.
The soirée at the house of the Zeretellis left an ineffaceable impression on our minds, because it was the first time that we got a glimpse of the social life of the country. Here we saw ladies in their national costume and witnessed for the first time the performance of the national dance—the Lesginka. We also participated for the first time at a banquet where the fiery Kachetin wine was poured from slender silver flagons into great drinking-horns, and where a toastmaster, chosen to this honorable office, proposed the healths—on this occasion, as first of all, the health of the guests from Austria. The host and hostess did not sit down at table but helped serve. Among those present we found many who spoke French, and where that was not the case Count Rosmorduc, who had learned the language of the country, served as dragoman.
In the salon stood a piano. My husband sat down at it and played some of the waltzes which he had himself composed, and the Caucasian society was full of admiration and danced to this music with perfect grace. But they were most pleasing in the Lesginka. This dance is usually executed by only one couple, while the rest sit in a circle and clap their hands in time to the music. The accompaniment is provided by a small native instrument which endlessly repeats a certain melody three bars long, and by tambourines adorned with little bells, on which skillful hands thump with an increasingly lively rhythm. The dance itself is a pantomime of the immemorial play of love: pursuit, flight, enticement. The men perform artistic pas; the women fairly float along the floor, the long, heavy silken garment concealing the feet so that they look as if they were rolling on invisible casters; the veil which is attached to their headdress flows behind them, and from the arms, stretched out in circling gestures, float the long double sleeves. As a conclusion to the festivity I treated the company to an Italian bravura aria and then to Auber’s Laughing-Song—Carlotta Patti’s show piece; the laughter in the song infected everybody, and the whole ended with a chorus of laughter.
And now the next morning we started for the goal of our journey, for Gordi, situated on a high plateau among the mountains. Count Rosmorduc chartered a troika and escorted us. It was jolly riding behind that spike team; the more the springless vehicle shook us up, the more fun we had out of it. The way was splendid; all the hedges were abloom with cascades of wild roses. At the same time the heat was frightful. All the more delightful the prospect that we were going among the mountains, where, as Count Rosmorduc assured us, cool and almost raw winds blow all the time.
After a journey of several hours across the plain we came to Pompey’s Bridge; this is that place where one must leave the carriage and ride horseback the rest of the way. We were now at the entrance of the defile, and the peaks of the mountains which we were to climb stood out steeply against the azure sky. The stream which roared and foamed under Pompey’s Bridge roared perhaps twice as loud in our ears because it had been described to us as the “Hippus” of the ancients; what classic craft—doubtless even Jason’s Argo when he went to capture the Golden Fleece—must it not have rocked on its billows! This was the place, I remembered from the Dedopali’s letters, where the young princely couple on their home journey had dismounted from the carriage, where the bridge had been spread with a carpet, and a triumphal arch of flowers had marked the boundary line of Mingrelia.
There was no triumphal arch awaiting us at Pompey’s Bridge, but there was a pleasing surprise: Prince Niko, accompanied by a great retinue, had ridden down to the threshold of his dominion to welcome the “Contessina” and her husband. Under a tent a table was spread with refreshments. There we had breakfast first and a toast of welcome was drunk, and then we addressed ourselves to the ascent. Horses were in readiness also for us and Count Rosmorduc; for me a gentle pacer. Prince Niko lifted me to the saddle, and now we had to ride up the seven kilometers of serpentine road, while the cavalcade of the princely escort, in their picturesque costume, were around us performing all sorts of feats of horsemanship in their high saddles, springing up and down the steep sides of the pass, and offering a perfectly wonderful spectacle.
And as we rode upward the temperature grew cooler and cooler, and the prospect over abysses and valleys more and more magnificent. The sun had already disappeared behind the mountains when we arrived at our destination. Gordi is situated on a great plateau, in the background of which, buttressed by a mountain wall, stands the prince’s castle, a wide edifice flanked with towers and adorned with numerous balconies and terraces. On the right and left at intervals were small, neat wooden villas. One of them was occupied by the dowager princess; one by Niko himself, because his castle was another that was not yet completed; one was for us; and the rest served as quarters for the other guests and neighbors.