The ride outside the city walls is not interesting until the Palace Gardens are reached. These are laid out with the forethought and tended with the scrupulous care which one always sees in the public grounds of Russia. Visits to the parks in that country go far to compensate one for the absence of more natural, diversified scenery. We spent a pleasant hour or two among the winding roads and footpaths, obtaining many views of the palace from different standpoints. It is an old-fashioned building, with an air of homely comfort reflected from every brick. If hoarded memories of twenty or thirty other palaces in Europe had not interfered, we should hardly have been able to resist the importunities of our guide to behold more relics of his adored Napoleon. At 6 P. M. dinner was much more to our liking than the exhibition of rooms in endless succession, however thickly crowded with souvenirs of the great.
Our man’s promise about a good dinner was fulfilled. The restaurant where we pulled up for the momentous transaction is small but nicely kept. The meal was served in a pretty little garden in the rear of the premises. The walls were masses of climbing-plants in full bloom. Venerable trees kept off the still warm rays of the declining sun. A fountain shot its sparkling jet high in air, and the crystal drops tinkled musically as they fell back into a marble basin. Our round table was spread under a mighty oak. Sparrows of the unadulterated English type hopped familiarly about us, as if expecting crumbs from the forthcoming feast. They were the tamest of birds, alighting on the tops of chairs almost within reach. At times they seemed to dare one to drop a pinch of salt on their tails, preparatory to catching them, according to the method recommended in childhood. As the dinner, besides being excellent, was lengthy and in quantity superabundant, there was plenty to spare for the companionable sparrows. They flocked to us from all parts of the grounds, and at one time the chirping congregation could have been numbered by the hundreds. There was nothing particularly Russian about the dinner, except the soup, which was serious and important. From this dish the central island of meat and the stuffed pastry-ball are never absent. The occurrence of a meat entrée between the soup and the fish is another invariable departure from the Western menus. There was an abundance of sauces served upon meats which we had been accustomed to eating quite dry or in their natural gravy. Where all was good, no one item—the soup excluded—lives in my recollection. But I shall not soon forget the honest, delicious wine of the Crimea. A little experience with the Russian vintages had impressed me favorably. They have not the taste or the heating after-effect of the French wines which are now so commonly fortified and otherwise doctored all over the world, and not least in France herself—and, worst of all, perhaps, in Paris. So I ordered (through the Russian-speaking guide) a bottle of a Crimean brand. It was an accidental, but fortunate, choice. The wine was red, and had the general taste rather of Burgundy than of Bordeaux. But it had a bouquet of its own; it dwelt pleasantly upon the palate, and it produced those salutary effects of gentle warmth and cheer of which good wine may still be capable if not abused by the drinker. But one may travel thousands of miles in Europe and not find many wines of which this high praise could be justly spoken.
The English sparrows—pests in America—were so friendly and affable in their way that we were reluctant to leave them. But we finally bade them farewell with a parting largess of crumbs, and returned to Moscow by the light of the setting sun. As we quitted the pleasant restaurant, the proprietor and several of his staff flocked about to see us off, and looked an unutterable good-by with a kindness of manner which touched our alien hearts. I took pleasure in thinking that this mark of courtesy was paid to our nationality. The guide knew that we were Americans, and doubtless had mentioned that fact to the people at the restaurant. There may be many Russians still ignorant of America and Americans, but, among the vast majority in every part of Russia who are aware of the friendly relations which have always existed between the two nations, our countrymen are sure of a cordial welcome.
CHAPTER XXVII. A COMEDY OF PASSPORTS—MYTHICAL POLICE ESPIONAGE.
Travelers are told that, the farther they go into Russia, the more they are subjected to police espionage. Whenever at St. Petersburg I casually alluded to the informality of the passport examinations, any English tourist with whom I was conversing would be sure to say, with a knowing smile, “Wait till you get to Moscow.” “But, my dear sir,” I would rejoin, “the time to be strict is when one is entering the country. The object of requiring passports, as I understand it, is to guard against returning Nihilists and dangerous characters generally. I do believe that any other man could have come in on my passport, for nobody attempted to identify me by my own—perhaps flattering—description of myself. When it was finally handed back to me at Wirballen, the only sign that it had been inspected was a little round stamp next to the visé of the Russian consul-general at Berlin.”
“Just like the rascals,” an Englishman once said to me, lowering his voice a little. “I wonder if in America you ever heard the song about ‘The Spider and the Fly’? ‘Come into my parlor,’ you know, and all that sort of thing.”
I told him that it was not entirely unfamiliar to me, at which he seemed surprised.