have fallen like the gentle dew from Heaven on
Petersen: but it undeniably blessed him that
gave and him that received it. Petersen's
stomach was filled, his wide mouth satisfied:
so he was blessed: the gratitude of
repletion (I have seen a tiger in a
menagerie wink like the most beneficent of charity-
dinner stewards after a more than ordinarily
succulent shin-bone), the beatitude of
fulness led him to bestow on me a small,
ragged, and dirty scrap of paper, on which
was scrawled in German, and in—something
I thought, at first to be the mere caligraphic
midsummer madness of Petersen, but which
I afterwards discovered to be his best Russ
—these words, "Heyde's—Cadetten-linie,
Wassily-Ostrow—young Mr. Trobbener's
recommendation at J. Petersen." Who the
mysterious young Mr. Trobbener was, I
never was able to discover. Did Petersen
recommend him, or he Petersen?
Were Petersen and Trobbener the same
personages? Was Petersen himself young
Mr. Petersen, or old Mr. Petersen? Was
he of any age, or for all time, or for none?
Be it as it may, through the medium of
this paper, I too was blessed; for, though
on the first impulse I was inclined to scorn
Heyde's and to put Petersen down as an
unmitigated tout, it turned out that by an
accident—by a mere fluke of shiftlessness of
purpose—I did not go to the Hôtel Napoléon,
or the Hôtel Coulon, or the Hôtel
Klee, or to the Hôtel des Princes, or to
Mrs. Spink's, or to the Misses Benson's, or
to any of the ordinary hotels, or boarding-
houses where ordinary and sensible travellers
usually turn up on their first arrival
in Petropolis. Carrying out the apparent
decision in the superior courts that I am
never to do anything like anybody else, I
managed to lose all my fellow-travellers in
the yard of the temporary custom-house on
the English Quay (I hasten to observe for
the benefit of the critics who are waiting
round the corner for me with big sticks,
that the custom-house is at the southern
extremity of Wassily-Ostrow, and that the
cellars where we were searched were but
a species of luggage chapel-of-ease to the
greater Douane). Then, going very vaguely
down unto Droschky, I fell at last among
Heyde, luggage and all. A very excellent
find; a nugget of treasure trove it was to
me; for I declare that with the exception
of the fortress of Cronstadt (the congeries
of forts, yards, work-shops, guard-ships, and
gun-boats, I mean), which is one eye-blinding
instance of apple-pie order and new-pin
cleanliness, the Hôtel Heyde is the only
perfectly clean place—bar none: nor palaces,
nor churches, nor princess's châlets in the
Islands—with which, in the Russian Empire,
this traveller is acquainted. The Hôtel
Heyde smelt certainly of soap and soup;
but both were nice smells and not too
powerful. It was reported that one bug had
been bold enough to cross the Neva from the
Winter Palace to Heyde's some years
previously; but, whether he was paddled across
the river in a gondola, or driven across the
Novi-Most, or New-Bridge in a droschky,
was never known. He came to Heyde's, but
broke his heart the first night in a miserable
attempt to make an impression on the skin of
the traveller for a German toy-merchant, just
arrived from the fair of Nishi-Novgorod
(where there are bugs that bite like sharks,
who have been under articles to crocodiles).
A housemaid nosed him in the lobby next
morning; but he saved himself from the
disgrace of public squashing by suicide, and
they show his skin in the bar to this day.

To be a little serious, Heyde's was from top
to bottom scrupulously and delightfully clean.
I have no interest in proclaiming its merits
to the world. I have paid my bill. I am
never going there again. I don't know Heyde
—I mean Zacharaï—personally; for it was
with Barnabay Brothers, his representatives,
that I always transacted business. Still I can
conscientiously recommend to all future
purposing Eussian travellers, the Hôtel Heyde,
as being clean and comfortable. It is dear, and
noisy, and out of the way; but that is neither
here nor there. If I had a few of Heyde's
cards with me, I would distribute them as
shamelessly as any hotel tout on Calais Pier;
and my opinion of Petersen now is, that he
is not merely a wide-mouthed and carnivorous
wolf-cub, in a beaver porringer—like the
city sword-bearer, who goes about the world
seeking eleemosynary beefsteaks and
trimmings—but that he is a philanthropist, who,
disgusted at the narrow-mindedness and
heart-sterility of the company that used to
go to Helsingfors, has proposed to himself as
a mission the perpetual pyroscaphal parcurrence
of the Neva from Petersburg to
Cronstadt and back again, and the ceaseless
distribution of unclean scraps of paper telling
in Teuton and in Sclavonic of Heyde's, and
young Mr. Trobbener, and himself, simply
because he is a philanthropist, and that
Heyde's is clean, and he, Petersen, has stayed
there, and knows it.

I came to Heyde's—though but one man—
in two droschkies, like that strange animal one
of which came over in two ships. In this
wise. I don't mean to imply, literally, that I
had one droschky for my body, and another
for my legs, à l'Américaine; though I was
quite fatigued enough to have rendered that
means of conveyance, had it been in accordance
with the proprieties of Petersburg, or
even with possibility, delightful. But this
was not to be. My having two droschkies
was necessitated by there being none but the
little Moscow side-saddles on wheels disengaged,
which hold indeed two passengers;
but, in the way of luggage, will not accommodate
so much as a carpet-bag in addition to
the human load. How ever my luggage was
loaded, or managed to be kept on the little