My new friend was for no small game, and proposed visiting some of the palaces. On the way he confided to me a conquest he had already made since his arrival; a beautiful young lady, of course, the daughter of an Italian music-master, who resided directly opposite our hotel. He said he had applied for an apartment next to mine, which commanded a view of the window at which she sat, and asked me, as a friend, whether it would be interfering with me. Having received my assurance that I had no intentions in that quarter, he said he would order his effects to be removed the same day.
By this time we had arrived at the Winter Palace, presenting, as I have before remarked, a marble front on the Neva of more than seven hundred feet, or as long as the side of Washington Square, and larger and more imposing than that of the Tuileries or any other royal palace in Europe. We approached the large door of entrance to this stately pile, and, notwithstanding my modest application, backed by my companion's dashing exterior, we were turned away by the imperial footman because we had not on dresscoats. We went home and soon returned equipped as the law of etiquette requires, and were admitted to the imperial residence. We ascended the principal story by the great marble staircase, remarkable for its magnificence and the grandeur of its architecture. There are nearly a hundred principal rooms on the first floor, occupying an area of four hundred thousand square feet, and forming almost a labyrinth of splendour. The great banqueting-hall is one hundred and eighty-nine feet by one hundred and ten, incrusted with the finest marble, with a row of columns at each end, and the side decorated with attached columns, rich gilding, and splendid mirrors. The great Hall of St. George is one of the richest and most superb rooms on the Continent, not excepting the pride of the Tuileries or Versailles. It is a parallelogram of one hundred and forty feet by sixty, decorated with forty fluted Corinthian columns of porphyritic marble, with capitals and bases of bronze richly gilded, and supporting a gallery with a gilded bronze balustrade of exquisite workmanship. At one end, on a platform, is the throne, approached by a flight of eight steps, covered with the richest Genoa velvet, embroidered with gold, with the double-headed eagle expanding his wings above it. The large windows on both sides are hung with the richest drapery, and the room is embellished by magnificent mirrors and colossal candelabra profusely gilded.