Abundant as the diversions are during the Russian carneval, they double and triple during the last lays of the butter-week. Fast and furious waxes the revelry during the three or four days preceding the great fast. The schools break up, the public offices are closed, the great theatres give representations morning and evening, and the twelve bajazzos on the Katsheli announce some novelty every five minutes ; the rich give dejeuners dansants, wliich last till five or six in the evening, take a few hours rest, and then make a new and brilliant toilette for a second ball at night. xVmongst the common people, in the meantime, the drunkenness of the evening concludes the intoxication of the morning ; the public, wherever it is to be seen, seems in the best possible humour, and applauds every thing and every body. The emperor and all his court drive about in their brilliant equipages ; down rush the sledges from the ice mountains till the ice glows again ; the swings are at full flight, the bells of the wooden houses in the roundabouts tingle without ceasing ; the bajazzos announce from hour to hour how long the Masslanitza has to last : nimbly rolls his lesson ofl: the tongue of him who shows the Hons and the boa-constrictor, that he may despatch one set of customers and get as many more as possible. All the pulses of life beat prestissimo — all seem eager to drain the last drop in the cup of joy, until the hour of midnight strikes and proclaims the beginning of the fast. Every dancing couple is brought to a sudden halt, and every one departs homeward to s eeten the tediousness of the fast with the remembrance of the enchanting joys in which the last days of the carneval were brought to a close.
When one enjoys roast meat, meat soups, milk, and eggs, every day and all days as we other Christians do, we are only half aware how much savouriness and strength the animal kingdom lends to our food. Nothing but a Russian fast can properly teach one how excessively flat and insipid vegetables are without a mixture of animal food, and what a very secondary part they play in our kitchens. The severity of the Russian fast banishes not only flesh and fowl, but milk, eggs, butter, and even sugar on account of the small mixture of animal substance used in the refining. Animal food is the basis of our whole kitchen, and vegetables appear with grace and propriety only as the companions of meat, as the wife appears to advantage only in the company of the husband. Soups made of kwas and mushrooms, fish, and cakes flavoured with oil, tea and coffee with almond-milk, mushrooms again with cucumbers in vinegar, those are the dainties that succeed the fat blinnis, rich pasties, cakes and r6tis of the butter-week. Neither is wine or any spirituous liquor permitted, whereby a cook might give some spirit to his mushroomed, fishy, oily, fasting sauces, or the tea drinker to his watery beverage. The people of the lower class exclude even fish in the first and last weeks of the fast, as they do on the Wednesdays and Fridays in the remaining five. These two days, which must always take precedence of the others, are distinguished in the last week by total abstinence. The very strictly pious extend this additional severity of observance to the whole seven weeks, with a three days' total abstinence in the week before Easter. Even the upper classes observe the fasts much more strictly than they do in catholic countries. The first and last weeks, with the Wednesdays and Fridays of the remainder, are generally religiously observed. The greatest number of infractions of the fast bear reference to the brandy -bottle, the very point in which abstinence would be most beneficial ; some maintain that the Russians drink as much of it during the fasts as at any other time. It is not, however, called brandy, but it is enjoyed mider the disguise of all manner of euphemisms.
It is remarkable enough how carefully a Russian watches that notliing of an animal substance pass his lips when he has really made up his mind to fast in earnest. A young girl will throw away a whole cup of tea directly, if she smell that her French governess has put cream into it instead of almond-milk. Occasionally mothers take it on themselves to give their little ones a dispensation on the ground of indisposition. " You can't think how this disgusting fast does try one," said a youth to his tutor. " Last Easter I took the sacrament, and for fourteen days together we had nothing but oil, flour, and fish, and had to go three times a day to church. And then the everlasting standing, crossing, and kneeling, you have no notion how it affected me ! But at Easter, there was the supper at my uncle's ; I was not lazy there !"