"
At St. Petersburg:
"June 8-20.--Weather hot and sultry. At two I walked to the Summer Gardens,
which I found full of police-officers and soldiers. To-day there is a
celebrated promenade, that in which the young fillies range themselves in
two rows along the principal alley to be chosen by their future spouse.
However, it was as yet too early for this exhibition, and there was nobody
here except police-officers, the very sight of whom makes me sick; so off
I set, and was caught near the Newski Prospekt in a tremendous
thunder-storm, which forced me to take shelter, first under the arch of a
_porte-cochere_, and secondly in the Casan Church, in which I discovered
for the first time the baton of Marshal Davoust, stuck up in a glass-case
against one of the piers supporting the dome of the Church. Underneath the
baton, upon a gilded metal-plate, are two inscriptions, the one in Russ,
the other in Latin, which state that the baton is that of Marshal Davoust,
taken near Crasnoe, 5th Nov. 1812; so there can be no doubt of the fact.
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