Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar

During the whole evening the bands of the Preobra-jensky and Paulowsky regiments had played without cessation polkas, mazurkas, schottisches, and waltzes from among the choicest of their repertoires. Innumerable couples of dancers whirled through the magnificent saloons of the palace, which stood at a few paces only from the “old house of stones”-in former days the scene of so many terrible dramas, the echoes of whose walls were this night awakened by the gay strains of the musicians.