The evening parties at Tiflis were of the gayest, and there was an uninterrupted succession of them. One ended by knowing each other well, as one was continually meeting the same people which I thought was delightful. I saw not a few little glasses of vodka emptied by the gentlemen, but without traces of injurious or disastrous results--“Honi soit qui mal y pense”--with the exception, however, of an old general whose nose was always like a lighthouse, and who I saw fall down three times in the same evening, so tipsy was he; but he was set up again on his legs the same number of times and there was no more to be said. I always found in that liquid an awful smell of methylated spirit and took good care not to get further acquainted with it.
When short of vodka the moujik easily drinks methylated spirit, it appears, and gets drunk on it; this often happened during the last Revolution. And to think that the “Little Father” suppressed the use of it among his troops since the war! What a marvellous result of the so much abused “autocratic” power.
We often began our evenings at the theatre. The Opera was very good; and the house a very fine one; my aunt had her box, needless to say. It was there that I saw performed “Mademoiselle Fifi,” that story of Maupassant’s, episode of the war of 1870 and 1871 which would, alas, be so life-like to-day. Then we went to visit some of our friends. I must mention a charming party given by an attractive woman _à l’air gamin_ Madame Cheremetieff--Lise. The drawing-rooms represented a little country inn and its garden, what the Italians would describe as an “_osteria_.” It was full of local colour. Round the tables the women in full toilette, most of the men officers in uniform--which the Russians always wear. Many among them officers in the Cossacks and Tcherkesses, wearing on their heads their high astrakhan caps either white or black. Certainly in the soft veiled light it was a very pretty sight, and created a most charming and picturesque effect.
Madame Z----, a rich Armenian, gave charming fêtes, to which my aunt and I often went: excellent _buffet_, amidst every possible luxury. But the story of this lady having been discovered in her own house a few days before on the knees of a young officer, whose moustache she was lovingly pulling, somewhat cooled my aunt’s feelings towards her and she begged me not to go there without her in the future.