The hothouse temperature kept up in all the apartments cannot fail to act injuriously on the health. For more than ten months the outer air is never admitted into the house, and foreigners are affected in consequence with an uneasy sense of oppression and a sort of torpor that almost incapacitates them for thinking. As for the Russians, who are habituated to the thing from their childhood, they suffer little inconvenience from it; nevertheless many maladies probably owe their origin to this artificial warmth, which is equally enervating for body and mind. To this cause, no doubt, we must attribute the utter absence of blooming freshness from the cheeks of the Russian ladies. Incapable of enduring the slightest change of temperature, they have not the least idea of the pleasure derived from inhaling the fresh air, and braving the cold by means of brisk exercise. But for dancing, of which they are passionately fond, their lives would pass away in almost absolute immobility, for lolling in a carriage is not what I call putting oneself in motion. There is scarcely any country where women walk less than in Russia, and nowhere do they lead more artificial lives. We had a Russian family for two months at Clarofka, returning from the waters of the Caucasus, and waiting until the sledging season was fully set in, to get back to Moscow. This family, consisting of a husband and wife and the sister of the latter, was a great godsend for us during part of the winter. Madame Bougainsky is a very clever young woman, equally well acquainted with our literary works as with our Parisian frivolities. But dress and play are for her the two grand concerns of life, and all the rest are but accessories. I do not think she went out of doors three times during her two months' stay in Clarofka. The habit of living in the world of fashion and in a perpetual state of parade had taken such inveterate hold on her, that, without thinking of it, she used to dress three or four times a day, just as if she were among the salons of Moscow. I learned from her that the Russian ladies are as fond of play as of dancing, and that many ruin themselves thereby. On the whole, there is little poetry or romance in the existence of Russian women of fashion. The men, though treating them with exquisite politeness and gallantry, in reality think little about them, and find more pleasure in hunting, smoking, gaming, and drinking, than in lavishing on them those attentions to which they have many just claims. The Russian ladies have generally little beauty; their bloom, as I have said, is gone at twenty; but if they can boast neither perfect features nor dazzlingly fair complexions, there is, on the other hand, in all their manners remarkable elegance, and an indescribable fascination that sometimes makes them irresistible. With a pale face, a somewhat frail figure, careless attitudes, and a haughty cast of countenance, they succeed in making more impression in a drawing-room than many women of greater beauty.
[1] Liman, a Tartar word signifying harbour, is the name given to the gulfs formed by the principal rivers of Southern Russia before their entrance into the sea.