The beauty of the average Caucasian woman is by no means a negligible quantity, the type being usually dark with large black eyes; but they grow old prematurely, often becoming very fat. The men are usually tall with wasp-like waists; their features are good, but their expression is very often decidedly savage.
In the mountain districts there exists a fair ruddy type amongst some of the tribes; the women are very pretty and are much admired.
It was subsequently explained to me that these ladies on the floor were really practising a Russian dance and they were taking the parts which should have been allotted to their male partners.
I often met Princess Murat, _née_ Princess de Mingrélie, and her daughter Antoinette; her eldest son Lucien had married a daughter of my cousin the late Duc de Rohan, to whom the lovely Castle of Jocelyn in Brittany belongs, while her second son Napoléon, generally called Napo, was fighting on the side of the Russians at the war.
Her daughter Antoinette was looking after her mother’s vast estates with the knowledge of a man--and although not dressed in khaki could have shown some of our present-day girls on the land what real hard work means.
Some years previously the Duchesse de Rohan had, much to every one’s surprise, married her daughter to Prince Murat, whose ancestors do not date farther back than Napoléon, while the Rohans’ motto for generations has been: “Roy ne puis, Prince ne daigne, Rohan suis.”
Amongst the three daughters of the Duchess were Princess Talleyrand-Périgord, whose marriage was a failure, but who is dead now. Princess Murat does not get on very well with her husband, so no one was surprised when the third daughter, before selecting a fiancé, exclaimed: “My eldest sister was married to a man who says, ‘Vive le Roi,’ my other sister to one who says ‘Vive l’Empereur,’ I want a husband who says ‘Vive la Raison.’” She eventually married a Caraman-Chimay.
The various regiments from the basis of all social activity and I spent delightful moments with Princesses Orbeliani, Ratieff, Melikoff, Heristoff, etc. I saw much of the Princess de Georgia and the young Troubetzkoy princes, Nikita and Petia, all more or less related to my aunt; they gave delightful evening parties and I really think I did not spend one evening at home.