lashing our faces like a whip, and the stars blazing in the great
expanse of dull-polished steel above us with that hard diamond-like
radiance they only assume when the thermometer is down below zero.

Twenty-four hours later we were both in the vast halls of the Winter
Palace in full uniform, as bedizened with gold as a _nouveau riche's_
drawing-room. Though the world outside may have been frost-bound,
Winter's domain stopped at the threshold of the Palace, for once
inside, banks of growing hyacinths and tulips bloomed bravely, and the
big palms, from which the balls derived their name, stood aligned down
the great halls, as though they were in their native South Sea Isles,
with a supper-table for twelve persons arranged under each of them.
Those "Bals des Palmiers" were really like a scene from the Arabian
Nights, what with the varied uniforms of the men, the impressive
Russian Court dresses of the women, the jewels, the lights, and the
masses of flowers. The immense scale of everything in the Winter Palace
added to the effect, and the innumerable rooms, some of them of
gigantic size, rather gained in dignity by being sparsely tenanted, for
only 1,500 people were asked to the "Palmiers." There was nothing like
it anywhere else in Europe, and no one now living will ever look on so
brilliant a scene, set in so vast a _cadre_. There was really a marked
contrast between the two consecutive evenings Kennedy and I had spent
together.

One of the ladies of the British Embassy in Petrograd inquired of a
Court official what the cost of a "Bal des Palmiers" amounted to. The
chamberlain replied that for 1,500 people the cost would be about
9,000 pounds, working out at 6 pounds per head. This included a special
train all the way from Nice with growing and cut flowers, and another
special train from the Crimea with fruit. A very expensive item was the