fun.  Bulow seemed troubled that I should see his wife in a condition of advanced pregnancy, as I had once expressed my aversion from such a sight when speaking of another woman of our acquaintance.  It put us into a good-humour to be able to set his mind at rest in this case, for nothing could possibly put me out of sympathy with Cosima.  So, sharing my hopes and heartily rejoicing in the turn of my fortune, these two friends accompanied me to the Konigsburg railway station and saw me off on my long night journey.

In Konigsburg I had to wait half a day and a night.  As I had no desire to revisit my haunts in a place which had once been so fatal to me, I spent the time quietly in the room of an hotel, the position of which I did not even try to fix, and early in the morning continued my journey towards the Russian frontier.  With certain uneasy memories of my former illegal passage of this frontier, I carefully scanned the faces of my fellow-passengers during the long hours of travel.  Among these I was especially struck by one, a Livland nobleman of German descent, who, in the haughtiest German Tory tone, proclaimed his disgust at the Tsar’s emancipation of the serfs.  He wished me clearly to understand that any efforts on the part of the Russians to obtain their freedom would receive but scant support from the German nobles settled in their midst.  But as we approached St. Petersburg I was genuinely frightened to find our train suddenly stopped and examined by the police.  They were apparently searching for various persons suspected of complicity in the latest Polish insurrection, which had just broken out.  Not far from the capital itself the empty seats in our carriage were filled by several people, whose high Russian fur caps aroused my suspicions, which were not allayed by the attention which their wearers bestowed upon me in particular.  But suddenly the face of one of them brightened up, and he impulsively turned towards me and saluted me as the man whom he and several other musicians of the Imperial orchestra had come out on purpose to meet.  They were all Germans, and on our arrival at the St. Petersburg railway station they joyfully introduced me to a further large contingent from the orchestra, headed by the committee of the Philharmonic Society.  I had been recommended to a German boarding-house on the Newsky Prospect as a suitable residence.  There I was very graciously and flatteringly received by Frau Kunst, the wife of a German merchant, in a drawing-room whose windows commanded a view of the wide and busy street, and where I was very well served.  I dined in common with the other boarders and visitors, and often invited Alexander Seroff, whom I had formerly known in Lucerne, to be my guest at table.  He had called on me immediately on my arrival, and I learned that he held a very poor appointment as censor of German newspapers.  His person bore signs of much neglect and ill-health, and proved that he had had a hard struggle for existence; but he speedily