"Yes, madam."
"Whom was he saluting?"
"Us," replied the man, with imperturbable gravity. Very different from our poor fellow, who remembers his duties to the saints and churches, and salutes Kazan Cathedral, as we pass, with cross and bared head, is the fashionable coachman, who sees nothing but his horses. Our man's cylindrical cap of imitation fur is old, his summer armyak of blue cloth fits, as best it may, over his lean form and his sheepskin tulup, and is girt with a cheap cotton sash.
The head of the fashionable coachman is crowned with a becoming gold-laced cap, in the shape of the ace of diamonds, well stuffed with down, and made of scarlet, sky-blue, sea-green, or other hue of velvet. His fur-lined armyak, reaching to his feet,--through whose silver buttons under the left arm he is bursting, with pads for fashion or with good living,--is secured about his portly waist by a silken girdle glowing with roses and butterflies. His legs are too fat to enter the sledge,--that is to say, if his master truly respects his own dignity,--and his feet are accommodated in iron stirrups outside. He leans well back, with arms outstretched to accord with the racing speed at which he drives. In the tiny sledge--the smaller it is, the more stylish, in inverse ratio to the coachman, who is expected to be as broad as it is--sits a lady hugging her crimson velvet shuba lined with curled white Thibetan goat, or feathery black fox fur, close about her ears. An officer holds her firmly with one arm around the waist, a very necessary precaution at all seasons, with the fast driving, where drozhkies and sledges are utterly devoid of back or side rail. The spans of huge Orloff stallions, black or dappled gray, display their full beauty of form in the harnesses of slender straps and silver chains; their beautiful eyes are unconcealed by blinders. They are covered with a coarse-meshed woolen net fastened to the winged dashboard, black, crimson, purple, or blue, which trails in the snow in company with their tails and the heavy tassels of the fur-edged cloth robe. The horses, the wide-spreading reddish beard of the coachman, parted in the middle like a well-worn whisk broom, the hair, eyelashes, and furs of the occupants of the sledge, all are frosted with rime until each filament seems to have been turned into silver wire.
There is an alarm of fire somewhere. A section of the fire department passes, that imposing but amusing procession of hand-engine, three water-barrels, pennons, and fine horses trained in the haute école, which does splendid work with apparently inadequate means. An officer in gray lambskin cap flashes by, drawn by a pair of fine trotters. "Vot on sam!" mutters our izvostchik,--There he is himself! It is General Gresser*, the prefect of the capital, who maintains perfect order, and demonstrates the possibilities of keeping streets always clean in an impossible climate. The pounding of those huge trotters' hoofs is so absolutely distinctive--as distinctive as the unique gray cap--that we can recognize it as they pass, cry like the izvostchik, "Vot on sam!" and fly to the window with the certainty that it will be "he himself."
* Since the above was written, this able officer and very efficient prefect has died.
Court carriages with lackeys in crimson and gold, ambassadors' sledges with cock-plumed chasseurs and cockaded coachmen, the latter wearing their chevrons on their backs; rude wooden sledges, whose sides are made of knotted ropes, filled with superfluous snow; grand ducal troikas with clinking harnesses studded with metal plaques and flying tassels, the outer horses coquetting, as usual, beside the staid trot of the shaft-horse,--all mingle in the endless procession which flows on up the Nevsky Prospekt through the Bolshaya Morskaya,--Great Sea Street,--and out upon the Neva quays, and back again, to see and be seen, until long after the sun has set on the short days, at six minutes to three. A plain sledge approaches. The officer who occupies it is dressed like an ordinary general, and there are thousands of generals! As he drives quietly along, police and sentries give him the salute of the ordinary general; so do those who recognize him by his face or his Kazak orderly. It is the Emperor out for his afternoon exercise. If we meet him near the gate of the Anitchkoff Palace, we may find him sitting placidly beside us, while our sledge and other sledges in the line are stopped for a moment to allow him to enter.
Here is another sledge, also differing in no respect from the equipages of other people, save that the lackey on the low knife-board behind wears a peculiar livery of dark green, pale blue, and gold (or with white in place of the green at Easter-tide). The lady whose large dark eyes are visible between her sable cap and the superb black fox shawl of her crimson velvet cloak is the Empress. The lady beside her is one of her ladies-in-waiting. Attendants, guards, are absolutely lacking, as in the case of the Emperor.
Here, indeed, is the place to enjoy winter. The dry, feathery snow descends, but no one heeds it. We turn up our coat collars and drive on. Umbrellas are unknown abominations. The permanent marquises, of light iron-work, which are attached to most of the entrances, are serviceable only to those who use closed carriages, and in the rainy autumn.
Just opposite the centre of this thronged promenade, well set back from the street, stands the Cathedral of the Kazan Virgin. Outside, on the quay of the tortuous Katherine Canal, made a navigable water-way under the second Katherine, but lacking, through its narrowness, the picturesque features of the Fontanka, flocks of pigeons are fed daily from the adjoining grain shops. In the curve of the great colonnade, copied, like the exterior of the church itself, from that of St. Peter at Rome, bronze statues, heroic in size, of generals Kutuzoff and Barclay de Tolly, by the Russian sculptor Orlovsky, stand on guard.