The Rambles of a Rat Part 10

"And where am I to get the silver salver?" said he.

"That's in keeping of Matwei the buffets.h.i.+k," observed the table-decker.

"And where is Matwei to be found?"

"Here you, Vatka," pursued the valet, turning to another attendant, who was busy over his basin of kwas, "go you to Matwei and tell him that we want a silver salver on which to carry a tumbler, for my lady's fainting up stairs, and my lord is calling for water."

A loud ring from above was heard, as if to enforce the order. "Sei tshas! sei tshas!-- directly, directly!" called out Vatka; but he nevertheless finished his kwas, and wiped his mouth before he went to Matwei the butler to procure the silver salver on which Ivan the footman would carry the tumbler of water which Paul the valet had been ordered to bring.

Before all was ready another messenger came to tell Ilia the bearded coachman to put to the horses, for the lady was ready for her drive.

It was evident that she had managed to recover from her fainting fit without the aid of the gla.s.s of water,-- a happy thing for one who had the misfortune to keep fifty or sixty servants.

Wisky laughed at my look of surprise. "I believe that one pair of hands," said he, "often serve better than a dozen. The Russian proverb says that 'directly' means _to-morrow morning_, and 'this minute' _this day week_."

With quiet night came our feasting-time, and when the kitchen was deserted by the crowds of servants, Whiskerandos, Wisky, and I, crept softly out of our hole, provided with pretty sharp appet.i.tes for our meal.

"I am curious to taste that liquor which you call kwas," said I; "Vatka seemed to relish it exceedingly."

"Relish it, brother! I should think so!" exclaimed Wisky. "Kwas is to a Russian what water is to a fish; rich or poor could hardly bear existence without it."

"Not bad at all," said I, dipping my whiskers carefully into a bowl that had been set aside by the cook.

"Mind you don't tumble in, old fellow!" cried Whiskerandos, "and be drowned in kwas as I have heard that a duke once was drowned in wine."

"And what may this kwas be made of?" inquired I, after another approving sip.

"I ought to know, little brother," replied Wisky, "for many and many a time have I seen it brewed. A pailful of water is poured into an earthen jar, into which are shaken two pounds of barley-meal, half a pound of salt, and a pound and a half of honey. The whole is then placed in an oven with a moderate fire, and constantly stirred. It is left for a time to settle, and in the morning the clear liquor is poured off. In a week it is in the highest perfection."

"I wonder that kwas is not made in England," observed I; "but honey is not so plentiful there."

"Sugar would make a good subst.i.tute, I should think," said Wisky; "the beverage would not then be an expensive one. But here is our beloved Whiskerandos busy with his shtshee, the dish of all dishes in this country, that which nothing, I believe, could ever drive from the table or the heart of a Russian. When in a foreign land, it is said, it is not the remembrance of native hills or plains, or the tender delights of home, that draws tears into an exile's eyes, but the loss of his beloved shtshee, the favourite dish of his childhood."

"Leave a little for me!" I cried eagerly to Whiskerandos, who had nearly finished, by dint of steady perseverance, a portion which had been left in a plate. "Why," I added, as I tasted the liquid, "this seems to me simply cabbage soup!"

"Whatever my brother may think of it," observed Wisky, dipping his whiskers into the nearly empty plate, "he is now tasting that which forms the princ.i.p.al article of food of forty millions of human beings!

Better live without bread than without shtshee."

"And the ingredients?" said I, for I always delighted to pick up any sc.r.a.p of information interesting to a rat.

"There are almost as many ways of making shtshee as of cooking potatoes.

I have seen six or seven cabbages chopped up small, half a pound of b.u.t.ter, a handful of salt, and two pounds of minced mutton added, the whole mixed up with a can or two of kwas. But it is now time, brothers, for us to sally forth. I must do the honours of this our city, and show my ill.u.s.trious guests whatever I may deem worthy of their observation."

CHAPTER XVII.

A RAMBLE OVER ST. PETERSBURG.

"What a nation of painters Russia must be!" exclaimed I, as we quietly moved through the silent streets. Every shop had a picture before it, expressive of the occupation of its owner. Here was a tempting board covered with representations of every loaf and roll that a painter's fancy could devise; there a tallow-chandler did his best to make candles appear picturesque. Even from the second and third floors hung portraits of fiddles, and flutes, boots, shoes, caps, bonnets, and bears' grease, and on one board a sad likeness of a rat in a trap made us quicken our steps as we pa.s.sed it.

We moved through a deserted market. Here whole lanes are devoted to the sale of a single kind of article. There is the stocking row, the shoe row, the hat row, at which it appeared that a whole nation might have provided covering for head and for feet.

"I wish, dear brother," said Wisky, "that your visit had been in the season of winter. I could then have led you to a market which strangers must indeed have surveyed with surprise. You would then have seen beasts, fishes, and fowls, all frozen so hard that the hatchet is required to divide them. You would have pa.s.sed through rows of dead sheep standing upon their feet, motionless oxen that seemed ready to low, whole flocks of white hares appearing actually in motion, reindeer and elks on whose mighty horns the pigeons fearlessly perch!"

"The cold must then be fearful in winter," said I.

"Oh! the houses are kept so warm with stoves that there but little suffering is known. But woe to the men who loiter in the streets when they are paved with ice and glistening with snow! The pa.s.sengers run for their lives, with the sharp wind rus.h.i.+ng after them, as a cat after a mouse! Men cover even their faces with fur; but should an unlucky nose peep out from the warm shelter, the bitter frost often bites it on a sudden. "Father-- father! thy nose!" thus will one stranger salute another as he pa.s.ses; and if not speedily rubbed with snow, the nose of the poor pa.s.senger is lost! Men's very eyes are sometimes frozen up, and they have no resource but to beg admission at the first door to which they can grope, to unthaw their glued lashes at a stove!"

"All this is very curious," observed I, "but still I have little desire to witness it. The long winter must be dreary indeed!"

"The Russians are lively fellows," observed Wisky, "and instead of grumbling at dark skies and piercing blasts, they make merry where others would murmur. When winter must perforce be their companion, they oblige the grim old giant to add to their amus.e.m.e.nts. You should see the gay sledges as they dash at full speed over the frozen surface of the River Neva! and the ice-mountains which the people raise, and down which they glide swift as lightning, laughing, shouting, and singing! I have seen snow piled up to the very roof of a house; and down its steep slope, merely seated on a mat, a large merry party glide gaily to the ground. But," he cried, suddenly interrupting himself, "have a care where you tread, my brother, or you will be down into that ice-pit!

Never was there such a place as St. Petersburg for these,-- no large house is deemed complete without one. If Russians _cannot_ be without abundance of ice in winter, they show that they _will_ not be without it during their brief hot summer,-- the quant.i.ties consumed could scarcely be believed!"

Whiskerandos, who had been lingering behind us, in a tempting quarter of the market, now scampered up and joined us. We were pa.s.sing at the time a large building, and I could not avoid looking up in wonder at its strange columns. Of these there were no fewer than a hundred, and the capital of each was formed by three cannon, with their round open mouths yawning down into the street.

"This," said our guide, following the direction of my eyes, "is the Spa.s.s Preobrashenskoi Sabor; a church greatly adorned with the spoils of nations vanquished by Russia."

"Well," said Whiskerandos, who in the course of his adventurous life had both seen cannon and learnt their use, "perhaps those big instruments of war are just as well up there, where they are seen, and not heard or felt. Man is the only creature, I fancy, who, not content with what powers of destruction nature has given him, cuts down trees from the forest, digs iron from the mine, sets the furnace glowing, and the engine working, to fas.h.i.+on means of killing his brothers in a wholesale manner."

"Yonder," said Wisky, pointing with his nose, "are the father of the Russian fleet and the grandmother of the houses of St. Petersburg."

"Let's see them by all means!" I exclaimed; "I have viewed plenty of Russian s.h.i.+ps and Russian houses, and I have a lively curiosity to see the father and the grandmother of so famous a family!"

Wisky rapidly led the way to a hut, into which with little difficulty we entered, for locks and bars do not keep out rats, nor surly porters refuse them admission.

"Is this the father of the Russian fleet!" exclaimed Whiskerandos rather contemptuously, running, audacious rat that he was, along the edge of a boat about thirty feet long. "Is Russia a child, that she should amuse herself with a toy, and keep a big boat under a roof where there is no water to float it, as if it were some delicate jewel!"

"On no jewel in the Emperor's crown," replied Wisky, "would a Russian look with the same interest as on that poor boat. Peter the Great helped to fas.h.i.+on it himself! He found his country without a navy, and he gave her one; he laboured himself as a common s.h.i.+p-wright: and now, as a mighty oak springs from a single acorn, in that one boat his people view with reverence "The father of the Russian fleet."

"And where is the grandmother of the houses?" inquired I.

"That is hard by," replied Wisky. "It is nothing but a small wooden cottage which Peter built for himself by the Neva, before a single street stretched across the dreary bog upon which he founded this city of palaces!"

And so we rambled on, light-hearted rats that we were, picking up sc.r.a.ps here and there, and exchanging observations, till a faint blush in the eastern sky warned us that it was time to go home. Before we reached the house already criers were abroad in the streets, screaming, "Boots from Casan!"-- "Pictures from Moscow!"-- "Flowers, fine flowers!" as they wandered on, carrying their wares on their heads. Fierce-looking fellows, with long s.h.a.ggy hair and beards, wrapped up in skins were pa.s.sing about, exchanging good-natured greetings, strangely in contrast with their appearance. "Good-day, brother! how goes it? what is your pleasure? how can I serve you?" Smiling, bowing, baring their rough heads to each other, these poor Russians appeared the very pictures of politeness shrouded in sheepskin. But remembering that even amongst the most civilized nations of the world, rats are considered as quite beyond the pale of courtesy, and that the most good-natured Musjik in this city would have thought nothing of hitting one of us over with his shoe, we thought it better to retreat while our skins were whole, and regain our comfortable quarters in the kitchen.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW WE WERE TRANSPORTED.

It was my intention, as well as that of Whiskerandos, after hearing of the cheerfulness of a Russian winter, and the comfort preserved in the houses, to remain to witness the ice-mountains, the frozen Neva, and, above all, the wonderful market which Wisky had described to us on that night.

Our intentions, however, were frustrated, and our projects of amus.e.m.e.nt defeated by an incident which suddenly altered the whole course of our affairs.