ch Rastrelli so persistently served up at the close of the eighteenth
century, is that of the Counts Stroganoff, at the lower quay of the
Moika. The Moika (literally, Washing) River is the last of the
semicircular, concentric canals which intersect the Nevsky and its two
radiating companion Prospekts, and impart to that portion of the city
which is situated on the (comparative) mainland a resemblance to an
outspread fan, whose palm-piece is formed by the Admiralty on the Neva
quay.

The stately pile, and the pompous air of the big, gold-laced Swiss
lounging at the entrance on the Nevsky, remind us that the Stroganoff
family has been a power in Russian history since the middle of the
sixteenth century.

It was a mere handful of their Kazaks, led by Yermak Timofeevitch, who
conquered Siberia, in 1581, under Ivan the Terrible, while engaged in
repelling the incursions of the Tatars and wild Siberian tribes on the
fortified towns which the Stroganoffs had been authorized to erect on
the vast territory at the western foot of the Ural Mountains, conveyed
to them by the ancient Tzars. Later on, when Alexei Mikhailovitch, the
father of Peter the Great, established a new code, grading punishments
and fines by classes, the highest money tax assessed for insult and
injury was fifty rubles; but the Stroganoffs were empowered to exact one
hundred rubles.

Opposite the Stroganoff house, on the upper Moika quay, rises the large,
reddish-yellow Club of the Nobility, representing still another fashion
in architecture, which was very popular during the last century for
palaces and grand mansions,--the Corinthian peristyle upon a solid,
lofty basement. It is not an old building, but was probably copied from
the palace of the Empress Elizabeth, which stood on this spot. Elizaveta
Petrovna, though she used this palace a great deal, had a habit of
sleeping in a different place each night, the precise spot being never
known beforehand. This practice is attributed, by some Russian
historians, to her custom of turning night into day. She went to the
theatre, for example, at eleven o'clock, and any courtier who failed to
attend her was fined fifty rubles. It was here that the populace
assembled to hurrah for Elizaveta Petrovna, on December 6, 1741, when
she returned with little Ivan VI. in her arms from the Winter Palace,
where she had made captive his father and his mother, the regent Anna
Leopoldina. It may have been the recollection of the