You will want to know how I come to be here. I also have already asked
myself this question, and the answer I received was that change is the
soul of life. The truth of this profound saying becomes especially
obvious after having lived for ten weeks in a sunny room of a hotel,
with the look-out on pavements. The charms of moving become rather
blunted if they occur repeatedly within a short period; I therefore
determined to forego them, handed over all paper to----, gave Engel my
keys, declared that I would put up in a week at Stenbock's house, and
drove to the Moscow station. This was yesterday at noon, and this
morning, at eight o'clock, I alighted here at the Hôtel de France. First
of all I shall pay a visit to a charming acquaintance of former times,
who lives in the country, about twenty versts from here; to-morrow
evening I shall be here again; Wednesday and Thursday shall visit the
Kremlin and so forth; and Friday or Saturday sleep in the beds which
Engel will meantime buy. Slow harnessing and fast driving lie in the
character of this people. I ordered the carriage two hours ago: to
every call which I have been uttering for each successive ten minutes of
an hour and a half, the answer is, "Immediately," given with
imperturbably friendly composure; but there the matter rests. You know
my exemplary patience in waiting, but everything has its limits;
afterwards there will be wild galloping, so that on these bad roads
horse and carriage break down, and at last we reach the place on foot. I
have meanwhile drunk three glasses of tea and annihilated several eggs;
the efforts at getting warm have also so perfectly succeeded that I feel
the need of fresh air. I should, out of sheer impatience, commence
shaving if I had a glass. This city is very straggling, and very
foreign-looking, with its green-roofed churches and innumerable cupolas;
quite different from Amsterdam, but both the most original cities I
know. No German guard has a conception of the luggage people drag with
them into the railway carriage; not a Russian goes without two real