The Jesuits were not tolerated in Russia, their influence, intelligence, savoir-faire and cunning were feared. The Dominicans were looked upon kindly, as well as a few other Orders, and I consider that the exception was really flattering to their Order.
As for the Jews, they were looked at askance. There were no Jews admitted into the army, only a percentage of them were educated in the public schools, and that percentage was very small.
In Russia Jews are not known in society at all; besides, out there, they had not “depalestined” themselves as with us. Poland was full of them; at Vilna, for instance, two-thirds of the population were Jewish!
As in England, even more than in England, tea is the drink of the Palace as well as of the izba. In this cold country one often needs a hot drink, and the samovar, that really national object with its gentle, warm murmur of boiling water, is the first friend to greet you in a Russian house.
Russian tea is very good; the green tea is excellent, very scented and very strong. It comes from China on the backs of camels; therefore, the salt air has not robbed it of any of its first delicacy and strength. A slice of lemon generally replaces the milk and cream customary with us.
Women drink it in a cup, men from a glass in a gold or silver mount with a handle.
CHAPTER XIV
THE French Embassy welcomed me in the most charming way, and I retain the best remembrances of the moments spent in its salons. The Russians considered the Bompards bourgeois after the Montebellos, who had lived there en grands seigneurs, spending their large fortune, and dipping into it also a little. The Russians would have liked France to send them a marquis, a duke, a prince—considering that more flattering—but at least a “handle.” And, as the people who made this remark to me were considered to have advanced ideas, I answered: “But that is democracy; what else do you make of it?” Upon which there was silence.
One evening Madame Bompard told us as a great secret that we must all say how we liked the quality of the tea served that evening, for it had been sent her by the Chinese Minister, who would be there. We therefore all exclaimed on the merits of the liquid—very pale, very scentless, very insipid—which was served to us; the most perfect mixture possible, as it appears, and into which is introduced a great quantity of rose leaves. And the little yellow man was all smiles, swinging more than ever his long pigtail, the antics of which testified to his gratitude.
All the winter that same pigtail, a sort of bell-rope, inspired me with a wild desire to pull it; a desire that I repressed, as one of the secretaries, to whom I had confided my temptation, exclaimed breathlessly: “On no account do that, it would be a casus belli!”