Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/109

Rh 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