The house where we intended to lodge contained a corn store belonging to Mr. Yeams, English consul at Taganrok, who had obligingly invited us to use it when we quitted that town, and had sent orders to that effect to his clerk, M. Grenier: and so pleased were we with our quarters on our first visit to Rostof, that now the thought of going anywhere else never entered our heads. To have done so would have seemed an affront to Mr. Yeams's cordial hospitality. While we were unpacking the carriage, Anthony went and knocked at the door, and the coachman, unyoking his horses, in a trice went off as fast as he could, without even waiting to ask for drink money. Some minutes elapsed; Hommaire, losing patience, knocks again, when at last out comes Anthony with a very long face, and tells us that M. Grenier, clerk and Provencal into the bargain, refused of his own authority to receive us, pretending that he had not a room for us. Unable to comprehend such conduct, and believing that there was some mistake in the case, my husband went himself to the man, who putting his nose out from under the blankets, told him impudently, we must go and look for a lodging elsewhere.
All comment on such behaviour would be superfluous. To shut the door at night against one's own country people, and one of them a woman, rather than incur a little personal trouble, was a proceeding that could enter the head of none but a Provencal. The Kalmucks might have given a lesson in politeness to this boor, who rolled himself up snugly to sleep, whilst we spent the night, benumbed and shivering, under his windows in his court-yard. It may be conceived in what a state I passed the night; drenched with wet, worn down with mental and bodily fatigue, hungry, sleepy, and chilled by the sharp cold that at that season precedes sunrise, I was really unconscious of what was passing around me. As soon as it was light the Cossack procured horses, and took us to the best hotel in Rostof, where a warm room, an excellent bowl of soup, and a large divan, soon set us to rights again. On our arrival at Taganrok all the Yeams family were indignant at the behaviour of our Provencal, and, had we been disposed to pay him in his own coin we might have done so. They would have sent him his discharge forthwith, had we not interceded for him; the French consul wrote him a threatening letter, and with this our vengeance remained satisfied.
We learned at Taganrok that the strangest rumours had gone abroad respecting us. Some said that the Circassians had made us prisoners, others that we had perished of hunger and thirst in the Caspian steppes. In short, every one had had his own melodramatic version of our supposed fate. I cannot describe all the kind interest that was shown on our safe return from so hazardous a journey. In spite of our wish to arrive as soon as possible in Odessa, we could not refrain from bestowing a week on friends who received us with such warm sympathy.
The winds from the Ural swept away in one night all that October had spared. The weather was still sunny when we arrived on the shores of the Sea of Azof; but on the next day the sky assumed that sombre chilly hue that always precedes the metels or snow-storms. The whole face of nature seemed prepared for the reception of winter, that eternal sovereign of northern lands. The sea-beach covered with a thin coating of ice, the harsh winds, the ground hardened by the frost, and the increasing lividness of the atmosphere, all betokened its coming, and made us keenly apprehensive of what we should have to suffer on our way to Odessa, where we were to take up our winter quarters, and from whence we were still 900 versts distant. With the rapidity of the Russian post the journey might be accomplished in ten days, if the weather were not unfavourable; but after the threatening symptoms I have mentioned, we might expect soon to have a fall of snow, and perhaps to be kept prisoners by it in some village.
Unfortunately for us it was the most dangerous season for travelling in Russia. The first snows, which are not firm enough to bear a sledge, are much feared by travellers, and almost every year cause many accidents. At this period, too, the winds are very violent, and produce those frightful snow-storms which we have already described. It was a very cheerless prospect for persons so way-worn and weary as we were, to have incessantly to fight against the elements and other obstacles. I remember that in this last journey our need of rest was so urgent, that the poorest peasant seated by his stove was an object of envy to us.