No one could have failed to be interested. The Russian streets are ordinarily paved with sharp-edged stones, but the ice made them smooth as glass. Over the windows of the shops the girls could see painted pictures of what the shopkeepers had to sell inside. This is common in Russia, since so many of her poorer people are unable to read.
Most of the buildings in Petrograd are of stucco, and indeed, except for her churches and a few other buildings, the Russian capital resembles a poor imitation of Paris. Peter the Great, who constructed the city upon the swamp lands surrounding the river Neva, was determined to force Russia into the western world instead of the east. For this reason he brought all his artists from France and Italy, so that he might model his new city upon their older ones.
The Winter Palace itself the girls discovered to be a Renaissance building, with one side facing the river and the other a broad square. Their sleigh stopped by the tall monolith column commemorating Alexander the First, which stands almost directly in front of the Palace. Leading from the Palace to the Hermitage, once the palace of the great Catherine, is a covered archway.
The Hermitage is one of the greatest art museums in the world and contains one of the finest collections of paintings in Europe. Although the two Red Cross girls had now been in Petrograd several weeks, neither of them had yet been inside the famous gallery.
“Suppose we go in now and see the pictures,” Barbara proposed. “We might as well take advantage of our opportunities, even if we are miserable,” she added with the characteristic wrinkling of her small nose. “Besides, I’m frozen, and you must be more so, Nona. How I have adored my squirrel coat and cap ever since we came to this arctic zone! Thank fortune, our Countess has loaned you some furs, Nona! Do you know, I really am not so surprised that your mother was a Russian noble woman. You look like my idea of a Russian princess, with your pale gold hair showing against that brown fur. Who knows, maybe you’ll turn into a Russian princess some day! But shall I tell our driver to stop?”
Nona Davis shook her head, smiling and yet rather pathetic, in spite of her lovely appearance in borrowed finery.
“I don’t want to be a Russian princess, Bab, or a Russian anything, I am afraid, in spite of my heritage. I think it a good deal nicer to be engaged to an American like Dick Thornton. If you don’t mind, let’s don’t try to see the pictures today. I am tired and we ought to be fresh for such an experience. If you are cold, suppose we go back into the center of the town and walk about for a while. Then we can send the sleigh home to the Countess. I don’t feel that we should keep it for our use the entire afternoon, and if we stop to look at the pictures it would take the rest of the day. There are some queer side streets that join the Nevski Prospect I should like to see.”
The Countess Sergius lived about two miles away from the Winter Palace. When the girls were within a quarter of a mile of the house where they were guests, they finally got out of the sleigh. Their driver was an old man with a long beard and not the character of servant the American Countess would have employed under ordinary conditions. But her former young men servants were in the army, and like other wealthy families in Russia at this time, she was glad to employ any one possible.
However, Nona undertook to make the man understand that they would not need his services again that afternoon. She had more of a gift for languages than the western girl and her knowledge of French was always useful. So after a little hesitation, the big sleigh at last drove away. And actually for the first time since their arrival in Petrograd Nona and Barbara found themselves alone in the Russian streets.
There could be no danger of getting lost, for they had only to come to this central thoroughfare and the Countess’ house lay straight ahead.