[44] Head of the Secret Service under Alexander I.—­TRANSLATOR.

[45] That is, living too long.—­TRANSLATOR.

[46] Sukhoy, dry; Sukhikh, genitive plural (proper names are declinable), meaning, “one of the Sukhoys.”—­TRANSLATOR.

[47] The third from the top in the Table of Ranks instituted by Peter the Great.—­TRANSLATOR.

[48] Corresponding, in a measure, to an American State.—­TRANSLATOR.

[49] The Great Russians’ scornful nickname for a Little Russian.—­TRANSLATOR.

[50] Each coachman has his own pair or troika of horses to attend to, and has nothing to do with any other horses which may be in the stable.—­TRANSLATOR.

[51] Yakoff (James) Daniel Bruce, a Russian engineer, of Scottish extraction, born in Moscow, 1670, became Grand Master of the Artillery in 1711, and died in 1735.—­TRANSLATOR.

[52] The great cathedral in commemoration of the Russian triumph in the war of 1812, which was begun in 1837, and completed in 1883.  —­TRANSLATOR.

[53] Nyemetz, “the dumb one,” meaning any one unable to speak Russian (hence, any foreigner), is the specific word for a German.—­TRANSLATOR.

[54] Short for Nizhni Novgorod.—­TRANSLATOR.

[55] The famous letter from the heroine, Tatyana, to the hero, Evgeny Onyegin, in Pushkin’s celebrated poem.  The music to the opera of the same name, which has this poem for its basis, is by Tchaikovsky.  —­TRANSLATOR.

[56] Advertisements of theatres, concerts, and amusements in general, are not published in the daily papers, but in an affiche, printed every morning, for which a separate subscription is necessary.  —­TRANSLATOR.

[57] M. E. Saltikoff wrote his famous satires under the name of Shtchedrin.—­TRANSLATOR.

[58] The Little Russians (among other peculiarities of pronunciation attached to their dialect) use the guttural instead of the clear i.—­TRANSLATOR.

[59] A bishop or priest in the Russian Church is not supposed to speak loudly, no matter how fine a voice he may possess.  The deacon, on the contrary, or the proto-deacon (attached to a cathedral) is supposed to have a huge voice, and, especially at certain points, to roar at the top of his lungs.  He sometimes cracks his voice—­which is what the sympathetic neighbour was hinting at here.—­TRANSLATOR.

[60] An image, or holy picture, is obraz; the adjective “cultured” is derived from the same word in its sense of pattern, model—­obrazovanny.  —­TRANSLATOR.

[61] Ostrovsky’s comedies of life in the merchant class are irresistibly amusing, talented, and true to nature.—­TRANSLATOR.

[62] Turgenieff probably means Grusha (another form for the diminutive of Agrippina, in Russian Agrafenya).  The play is “Live as You Can.”—­TRANSLATOR.

[63] A full gown gathered into a narrow band just under the armpits and suspended over the shoulders by straps of the same.—­TRANSLATOR.