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A peace fell on her soul, and just as the gipsies' music had been of the devil, so this seemed to come from heaven itself. She felt calmed and happier when they came out. After an early lunch they saw from the hotel windows three troikas drawn up. Two of them Gritzko's, and one belonging to Prince Solentzeff Zasiekin, who had also a country place in the neighbourhood.
To drive out with an indefinite number of troikas to some village in the environs, or to the first station on one of the Government roads, is a common mode of spending a fine winter's night, and one which is equally popular in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These excursions, which always partake more or less of the nature of a picnic, form one of the chief pleasures of the cold season.
I am confident those attachés of the post office at Krasnoyarsk had a perfect knowledge of my features. In exactly another half hour our point and the horses were gained. When we entered the office it was positively declared there were no horses to be had, and it was a little odd that two troikas and six horses, could be produced out of nothing, and each of them at the end of a long talk.
The Prince had been leaning on the mantlepiece without speaking for some moments, listening to Tamara's conversation, but now he joined in, and sinking into a chair beside her, answered from there. "Thirty versts, Tantine we shall go in troikas but you must send your servants on the night before." Then he turned to Tamara, who seemed wonderfully absorbed, almost whispering to Stephen Strong.
Throughout the country in each government or province similar committees, called "Troikas," were created, each of three members, one from the Commissariat of War, one from the Department of Labor, one from the Department of Management, in each case from the local Commissariats and Departments attached to the local Soviet.
On the high road to B., at an equal distance from the two towns through which it runs, there stood not long ago a roomy inn, very well known to the drivers of troikas, peasants with trains of waggons, merchants, clerks, pedlars and the numerous travellers of all sorts who journey upon our roads at all times of the year.
Shedd describes the scene: "The jam at every bridge was indescribable confusion. Every kind of vehicle that you could imagine ox carts, buffalo wagons, Red Cross carts, troikas, foorgans like prairie schooners, hay-wagons, Russian phaëtons and many others invented and fitted up for the occasion.
The station keeper owned the horses we hired, and we learned he was accustomed to declare his regular troikas "out" on all possible occasions. Of course, a traveler anxious to proceed, would not hesitate long at paying two or three roubles extra. We dashed over the rough ice of the Tom for a few versts and then found a road on solid earth.
The experience he had gained in the course of his years of travelling from one end of Russia to another was of great advantage to him; he knew how to please his visitors, especially his former mates, the drivers of troikas, many of whom he knew personally and whose good-will is particularly valued by innkeepers, as they need so much food for themselves and their powerful beasts.
The entertainment ended with a cotillon, and for the stranger its originality was only marred by the fact that it had been thawing, and the company could not arrive or depart in "troikas," sleighs with three horses which seem to fly along the glistening moonlit snow. A favourite amusement, even in winter, is racing these "troikas," or sleighs, with fast trotters.
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