Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/173

 CHAPTER XIII

T that time motors were very rarely seen in Russia, the reason for this being, I suppose, that there were so few good roads; and when one did appear in the streets it immediately became an object of the utmost curiosity.

Another striking feature in Petrograd was that there was not a closed cab to be seen, nothing but little open vehicles, which struck me as being an almost barbarous custom considering the extreme cold of the place. I asked my aunt the reason of this; she told me that the authorities had once tried the experiment of "Voitures fermées—mais il s'y passait tant d'horreurs que l’on avait dû y renoncer."

The tziganes had an enormous success at Petrograd. I went to hear them play one night; their music was quite diabolical and so was the flashing of their eyes. They were the terrors of the mothers, and were responsible for many scandals—and even suicides. They played and sang with so much go and rhythm—it was quite bewildering; the hall was, needless to say, packed to overflowing.

At the time of my arrival in Russia the Dreyfus affair had been and still was the topic of general conversation, people's opinions over 2em