well not to leave any of his effects alone for a moment.

I got to St. Petersburg just as the first rays of the sun began to gild
the horizon. It was in the winter solstice, and the sun rose at the
extremity of an immense plain at twenty-four minutes past nine, so I am
able to state that the longest night in Russia consists of eighteen hours
and three quarters.

I got down in a fine street called the Millione. I found a couple of
empty rooms, which the people of the house furnished with two beds, four
chairs, and two small tables, and rented to me very cheaply. Seeing the
enormous stoves, I concluded they must consume a vast amount of wood, but
I was mistaken. Russia is the land of stoves as Venice is that of
cisterns. I have inspected the interior of these stoves in summer-time as
minutely as if I wished to find out the secret of making them; they are
twelve feet high by six broad, and are capable of warming a vast room.
They are only refuelled once in twenty-four hours, for as soon as the
wood is reduced to the state of charcoal a valve is shut in the upper
part of the stove.

It is only in the houses of noblemen that the stoves are refuelled twice
a day, because servants are strictly forbidden to close the valve, and
for a very good reason.

If a gentleman chance to come home and order his servants to warm his
room before he goes to bed, and if the servant is careless enough to
close the valve before the wood is reduced to charcoal, then the master
sleeps his last sleep, being suffocated in three or four hours. When the
door is opened in the morning he is found dead, and the poor devil of a
servant is immediately hanged, whatever he may say. This sounds severe,