138 ARRIVAL IN ST. PETERSBURG. 



able to continue our way by walking beside the sledge, 

 and finally reached Krasnoye-Selo, where we took up 

 our quarters with the post- master. Our complaint 

 against the post-keeper in Narva and in respect of the 

 Iswoshtchik he settled next morning in a very curt 

 fashion. He required from us the stipulated fare to 

 St. Petersburg, then gave the Iswoshtchik a sound 

 thrashing with his own hands until his strength was 



O " t? 



exhausted, and sent him back with this in lieu of 

 any payment to his master, whilst he drove us him- 

 self with his own horses on to St. Petersburg. 



In St. Petersburg I was received in a very friendly 

 manner by the merchant Heyse. an uncle of the poet 

 Paul Heyse. I had first made the acquaintance of the 

 Heyse family in Magdeburg, where, during my period 

 of service as recruit. I had received much maternal 

 sympathy and kindliness in the house of the widow of 

 school-director Heyse, distinguished as pedagogue and 

 as author of a German grammar. The Petersburg Heyse, 

 a son of the school-director, had in his younger years 

 gone to Russia, and had there raised himself to be a 

 partner in one of the most respected commercial houses. 

 The intercourse with the amiable, and still thoroughly 

 German, family was made easy by Heyse's procuring 

 a lodging for me in a hotel near his own residence on 

 the island Wasili-Ostrow. 



St. Petersburg with its grand site, its broad streets 

 and large squares, and especially with its mighty river, 

 the many -armed Xeva, made a powerful impression 

 on me. This was strengthened by the strangeness of 



