d the
following dawn. The first entertainment of the day was the second
breakfast:--for everybody naturally followed the French mode. Afterwards
there was skating on the lakes of the Tauride; then the traditional
drive down the Nevskiy Prospekt--a ceremony that shall endure till St.
Petersburg is forgotten; then a round of calls at the houses of those
old and noble families whose names demand that they open their doors
daily to the younger of their class. Later, between eight and nine
o'clock came dinner--a meal by no means neglected because of the tea,
_zakouski_ and sweets that had been consumed steadily since _dejeuner_.
And at ten o'clock, dinner over and the theatre begun, Petersburg began
to grow really wide awake and to enjoy itself. For of all nations in the
world, the Russian is the latest. Your true Slav nobleman is always a
night-owl. Languid at luncheon, he endures his drive, enjoys his dinner,
enthuses at the opera, scintillates at supper, and is _then_ roused to a
full sense of the real business of life: dancing, gambling, or prolonged
calls upon his friends; after which there is usually some
sleighing-party to the ice-palace on the Neva, or, if nothing better
offers, a round of the music-halls, which open only after the opera is
closed. Yes, truly, after one month in this land, no one will deny that
Paris has held too long the reputation that should belong to St.
Petersburg: that of the gayest of all the gay cities of the world.

Thus, for some months--from October to January--Ivan lived, nor paused
to reflect on the questionable usefulness of such a life. The boy had
known too many wistful years to be easily inoculated by any reactive
poison in his stimulant. All the quieter dreams of that secret, inner
life of boyhood, were temporarily laid by. He failed to appreciate the
real value of the life he had led; the gift that he had begun to develop
in the finest, highest way. Had any one questioned him--though no one of
his present world would have dreamed of so doing, he would doubtless
have laughed at the suggestion of returning to the old ways. But whether
such questions would or would not have set him, afterwards, to some
furtive weighing of respective values, it is impossible to say. Still,
one may be permitted to hope the best of one's hero; or how impress a
languid public with his qualities?

Madame Dravikine, despite her little discomfiture, would nevertheless
have declared the season from October t