ENTERING THE NEVA.
&
ALONG THE NEVA.
The superb horses—stallions, all of them—whirl past, driven by izvostchiks in dirty, truncated plug-hats and blue dressing-gown-like kaftans, whose sodden faces tell of vodka and hopeless haplessness. Beggars swarm (frightful creatures), and the faces of the officers, fine big men in striking uniforms, are dissipated, hard and cruel.
We are in a huge hotel. Big men in uniform open the door; big men in livery fill the halls; the rooms are big, ours is immense, with double windows, It is steam-heated, and also has hearth fires of burning wood. The building is warmed all through, even the halls. There are French waiters in the big dining-rooms; there is delicious food and delightful coffee, whose aroma is very perfume of the Orient; the beefsteaks are juicy, thick and tender. We have had no such meals since leaving America. On each story there is an elaborate bar for serving vodka (a fierce white whisky distilled from wheat) and drinks to the guests of that particular floor, and a single bath room, and a single diminutive toilet for both sexes’ common use.
The moment we set foot within the doorway of the hotel, up stepped an official, in blue and gold, and demanded our passports, and we were requested also to sign a paper like the one enclosed, viz.:
| NOTICE TO THE POLICE. | |
| Family and Christian Name: | WHERE IS YOUR PASSPORT? |
| Signature: | |
| Profession: | Please order your passport two days before leaving Russia. |
| Age: | |
| Confession: | |
| Arrived from .......... | |
This to be at once filed with the police department, and the passport not to be given back until we should notify the same big official,—whose duty it was to stay right there and watch all guests of that hotel, and who must be notified twenty-four hours before we leave the city,—when he will return the passport two hours before the said time set, and give it to me only upon my paying him the government fee of ten rubles (five dollars) in good yellow gold.[3] And right outside the door of our apartments, seated at a little table, are two officials, pen and paper in hand, who set down the hour and the minute of the day we enter and come out. They were there when we went to breakfast; they, or others as fox-jowled and lynx-eyed, were also there when we returned from the theater late at night, and they are there all through the day. Our Swedish guide, who does the duties of courier and shows us about the great city, is also registered at the police department, and he has to hand in every night a written report of what he has done with us all through the day, where we have gone, what we have seen, and we suspect even what we may have said. On the streets, big sword-begirded policemen stand at the intersections of the ways, pull out a little book from their pockets and make note of our passing that particular spot at that certain hour; at night these reports also are handed in to the central police office to be checked up against the statements of the guide and the spies at the hotel.
[3] I have subsequently learned that the legal fee is about three rubles ($1.50), the charge of ten rubles being impudent graft.
