The common people, in speaking to you, never address you otherwise, according to your age, than as mother, father, brother or sister, and in this usage every one is included, even the Emperor and the Empress and the whole imperial family. In the class above the populace there are a number of people in comfortable circumstances and others very well-to-do. The tradesmen's wives, for instance, spend a great deal on dress, without this appearing to impose any restriction on household expenses. Their head-dress especially is always fine and fashionable. On their caps, whose flaps are usually embroidered with small pearls, they wear a broad piece of stuff which falls from the head to the shoulders and down the whole back. This sort of veil throws a shadow on the face, which they assuredly need, seeing that all of them, I know not why, whiten and rouge their faces and pencil their eyebrows in the most absurd manner.
When the month of May comes to St. Petersburg there is no evidence of spring flowers embalming the air, nor of the nightingale's song, celebrated so much by the poets. The ground is covered with half-melted snow. The Doga brings into the Neva ice blocks as large as enormous rocks, heaped on top of each other, and these ice blocks renew the cold which has diminished with the breaking of the Neva. This dissolution might be called a splendid horror; the noise of it is fearful. Close to the exchange the Neva is three times as wide as the Seine at the Pont Royal, and one may imagine the effect of this sea of ice cracking in all its parts. In spite of the officials posted all along the quays to prohibit the people from jumping from floe to floe, the boldest venture upon the moving ice for the purpose of crossing the river. Before undertaking their dangerous expedition they make the sign of the cross, and then rush on, fully persuaded that if they perish it must be because they were predestined to it. The first who crosses the Neva in a boat at the hour of the breaking up presents a silver cup, full of river water, to the Emperor, who in turn fills it with gold.
The windows are still left stuffed up at this season. Russia has no spring, but the vegetation hastens to make up for lost time. One may say with literal truth that the leaves sprout while you watch them. One day at the end of May I went with my daughter for a walk in the Summer Garden, and, wishing to assure ourselves as to the truth of all we had heard concerning the rapidity of vegetable growth, we took note of some shrub-leaves that were only in bud. We took a long turn in the avenue, then coming back to the spot we had started from, we found the buds open and the leaves completely unrolled.