was one of the fiercest little men, with
one of the fiercest and largest cocked-hats I
ever saw. His face was yellow in the bony
and livid in the fleshy parts; and the huge
moustache lying on his upper lip, looked
like a leech bound to suck away at him for
evermore for some misdeeds of the
Promethean kind.

This Russian postman: don't let me
forget his sword, with its rusty leather
scabbard and its brazen hilt, which seemed
designed, like Hudibras's, to hold bread and
cheese; and not omitting, again, the half
dozen little tin-pot crosses and medals
attached by dirty scraps of parti-coloured
ribbon to his breast; for this brave had
"served," and had only failed to obtain a
commission because he was not "born."
This attaché of St. Sergius-le-Grand, if that
highly-respectable saint can be accepted as
a Muscovite equivalent for our St. Martin
of Aldersgate, used to come clattering down
the Cadetten-Linie on a shaggy little pony,
scattering the pigeons, and confounding the
vagrant curs. You know the tremendous
stir at a review, when a chief, for no earthly
purpose that I know of, save to display his
horsemanship and to put himself and his
charger out of breath, sets off, at a tearing
gallop, from one extremity of the line to the
other: the cock feathers in the hats of his
staff flying out behind them like foam from
the driving waters. Well: the furious charge
of a general on Plumstead Marshes was
something like the pace of the Russian
postman. If he had had many letters
to deliver on his way, he would have been
compelled to modify the ardour of his wild
career; but it always seemed to me that
nineteen-twentieths of the Cadetten-Linie
were taken up by dead walls, painted a
glaring yellow, and that the remaining
twentieth was occupied by the house where
I resided. It was a very impressive
spectacle to see him bring up the little pony
short before the gate of the hotel, dismount,
look proudly around, caress the ever-sucking
leech on his lip— as for twisting the ends
of it, the vampire would never have
permitted such a liberty—and beckon to some
passing Ivan Ivanovitch, with a ragged
beard and caftan, to hold his steed, or in
default of any prowling Ivan being in the
way, attach his pony's bridle to the palisades.
It was a grand sound to hear him thundering
—he was a little man, but he did thunder
—up the stone stairs, the brass tip of his
sword-scabbard bumping against his spurs,
and his spurs clanking against the stones,
and the gloves hanging from a steel ring in
his belt, playing rub-a-dub-dub on the
leather pouch which held his letters for delivery
—- my letters, my newspapers, when they
hadn't been confiscated—- with all the
interesting paragraphs neatly daubed out
with black paint by the censor. And when
this martial postman handed you a letter,
you treated him to liquor, and gave him
copecks. All this kind of thing is altered,
I suppose, by this time in Russia. I have
seen the lowest order of police functionary
—and the martial postman was first cousin
to a polizei—- seize Ivan Ivanovitch, if he
offended him, by his ragged head, and beat
him with his sword-belt about the mouth
until he made it bleed. Whereas, in these
degenerate days, I am told, a Russian gentleman
who wears epaulettes, or a sword, is
not allowed so much as to pull a droschky-
driver's ears, or kick him in the small of the
back, if he turn to the left instead of the
right. Decidedly, the times are as much
out of joint as a broken marionette.

I have no doubt, either, that the transaction
of prepaying a letter has been very
much simplified since the period in which
I visited Russia. The Poste Restante also,
has, of course, been sweepingly reformed.
Brooms were not used in Russia in my
time, save for the purpose of thrashing Ivan
Ivanovitch. The St. Petersburg Poste
Restante in 1856 was one of the oddest
institutions imaginable. It was a prudent
course to take your landlord, or some Russian
friend, with you, to vouch for your respectability.
In any case, you were bound to
produce your passport, or rather, your
"permission to sojourn," which had been granted
to you—- on your paying for it—- when the
police at Count Orloff's had sequestrated
your Foreign Office passport. When divers
functionaries— all of the type of him with
the blotting-pad and the blue pocket-handkerchief
— were quite satisfied that you were
not a forger of rouble notes, or an incendiary,
or an agent for the sale of M. Herzen's
Kolokol, their suspicions gave way to the
most unbounded confidence. You were
ushered into a large room; a sack of letters
from every quarter of the globe was bundled
out upon the table; and you were politely
invited to try if you could make out
anything that looked as though it belonged to
you. I am afraid that, as a rule, I did
not obtain the property to which I was
entitled, and somebody else had helped
himself to that which belonged to me.
I wonder who got my letters, and read
them, or are they still mouldering in the
Petropolitan Poste Restante?