A Japanese Imperial Prince, who was returning from a long tour in Europe to his country through Russia, with his spouse and a numerous suite, stopped for a few days in Moscow. I went to see these Japs at the Manège, where a great festival was given in their honour. The Prince and Princess wore European costumes which did not suit them at all; they would have been much better-looking in their own national costume. The Princess, into the bargain, had golden teeth (the sign of Imperial blood), which did not really embellish her.
In November my father came to pass the winter with my aunt Galitzine in Moscow. He had been ailing for some years, and I was painfully struck to see the change that had come over him. His illness took a dangerous turn, and soon after his arrival he departed this life. Father’s death gave me a great shock. It was weeks before I got over it. I wouldn’t see anyone, or take interest in anything. My health broke down completely and the doctors ordered me away from Moscow for some time. We decided to make a tour in Sweden and Denmark. So, at the end of June we started off to Stockholm, taking from St. Petersburg the Finnish boat “Döbbeln.” The captain, a consummate patriot, had with extreme suddenness forgotten every word of Russian, and we had to talk German to him, though we knew, of course, that he spoke and understood Russian perfectly well. That detestable man made disparaging remarks about Russia to our fellow-passengers, foreigners for the most part, and prided himself that his steamer was named “Döbbeln” after a famous Finnish hero, who had distinguished himself in the war of Sweden against Russia. When we approached Kronstadt, I heard him say that this fortress had only two strong forts, and that the rest of them were good-for-nothing, and could be easily blown to pieces by one bomb. My patriotic pride was awfully wounded, and I did all in my power to resist the temptation to give the captain a bit of my mind.
On the right side of the bay of Kronstadt our cruisers stood in a long line, and huge German men-of-war were anchored on the left one. Numerous steam-launches were plying all the time from one fleet to another. On one of our vessels a band was playing on the deck; it was our marine officers who were feasting their German comrades.
The weather was very fine and the sea had scarcely a ripple. Towards six o’clock dinner was spread on deck in Swedish fashion on a long table covered with appetising dishes, and you were asked to help yourself. That is a good way, because you have the opportunity of selecting what you prefer and of taking as much as you like.
At five o’clock in the morning we landed at Helsingfors and had only one hour to survey this pretty town. When we returned to our boat a fresh breeze arose and our ship began to pitch and rock. This disagreeable tossing of the waves made me feel sick and giddy. I hastened to my cabin and lay down. Early in the morning I was up and hastened on deck. The shores of Sweden had appeared at last, and soon we entered the port of Stockholm, the Venice of the North. The town, built upon islands, is very picturesque. As a rule, the Swedes are exceedingly courteous to strangers, nevertheless at the Custom House the officials burrowed into our trunks and opened all our bags, making a mess of everything. One of the men picked out a little folding looking-glass and turned it about in his clumsy fingers trying to find out what it was, till Sergy, at the end of his patience, opened the looking-glass and thrust it under the man’s ugly face, after which he left us in peace.
We put up at the Grand Hôtel, just opposite the Royal Palace. After having taken a little rest we went for a stroll in the town and crossed in a small steamer to Djurgarden, a beautiful park on the other side of the bay, where we had dinner at a small restaurant. A waiter, napkin upon arm, came up to us, but as we couldn’t speak a word of Swedish, we found it difficult to make him understand what we wanted, and had to converse by gestures to illustrate our meaning. But our attempts to describe a chicken being useless, the idea came to me to cry out cou-ca-ri-cou, and I came out of the difficulty. We ended our evening at “Tivoli,” a fashionable music-hall, where we met several fellow-passengers of our boat. The performance took place in the open. The actresses who sang and danced were more or less bad, very short-petticoated and very generously décolleté.
The next day we visited Drottningholm Palace, situated out of town, the summer residence of the King, who was for the moment in Norway, where he is obliged to live a part of the year. After dinner we started for Malmö, where we arrived early in the morning on the following day, and then took the train to Copenhagen.
CHAPTER XLVIII
COPENHAGEN
Thanks to the Exhibition in Copenhagen, all the hotels and boarding-houses were full, and it was with great difficulty that we succeeded in finding a shelter in a private house. By a winding staircase we were ushered into a dark, low room, looking into a grim back-yard, and scantily furnished with two beds, a few cane, inhospitable-looking chairs and a sofa losing its horse-hair through wide gaping wounds. Feeling very tired and sleepy, I lay down to rest a bit, but sprang up hastily, for the bed was abominable, the mattress as hard as stone and the pillows so thin that they could easily be folded in two. To crown all, behind the wall our landlady’s children were shrieking with all their might. It was impossible to go to sleep, and we decided to go and take the train to Tivoli and explore the Exhibition, with its chief attraction, an enormous elevator representing a huge bottle of beer with a magnificent bird’s-eye view of Copenhagen. We had dinner in a restaurant on board a ship of the middle-ages, and were brought in a barge with a three-storied poop to this curious establishment. The waiters were dressed in the costume of sailors belonging to that long past epoch, wearing broad-brimmed Rembrandt hats.