courage my friend. You shall still return to la
belle France. There is but one step, from
misery to hope. Good angel of Hope, permit
me now to take that step!"

A change had come over M. Cassecruche. He
sang, he danced, finally he washed his face in a
tumbler, adjusted his hair in the glass of his
snuff-box, brushed his coat, blackened his too
obvious toes with ink so that they might look
like part of his boots, lighted another cigarette,
drew a sketch of a ballet-dancer, and then
proceeded down stairs to the shop of M. Brisenoy,
military tailor, and his landlord, on the first floor.

Humming an air from the last opera, M.
Cassecruche knocked boldly at the door.

The door opened, and M. Louis Brisenoy
presented himself without his coat or waistcoat,
in slippers, and with hanks of red thread strung
round his neck. In one hand he held a heavy
pressing-iron, in the other a pair of scarlet
trousers. M. Cassecruche, in spite of severely
burning himself with the flat-iron, shook his
landlord by both hands.

"Congratulate me, congratulate me, my
friend," he said; "fortune smiles upon me. I
am appointed Professor of French at the
University of Klarkoff; hundreds of roubles a
year."

"Glad of it," said Brisenoy, "for I was just
coming up to ask for my three months' rent."

"Three months! Six months' rent would not
be sufficient to repay you for your unwearied
kindness, and the confidence you have ever
placed in me. Come, my dear friend, at once,
and dine with me at the great restaurant in the
Nevsky."

"But your clothes?" suggested Brisenoy.

"True," sighed Cassecruche, looking down
at his coat; "and the rest of my wardrobe
is——"

"No better. Well, we are all pinched one
way or the other. I can lend you a suit of
clothes for one night. Do you prefer evening
dress, or military?"

"I could not wear anything but evening
dress," replied M. Cassecruche, with injured
dignity. "Remember, I am a professor now,
and a government servant."

"True. Eh, bien! We shall have a pleasant
evening. What do you say to the opera afterwards?"

"By all means. I adore the opera," replied
the tailor's agreeable friend.

M. Cassecruche, arrayed in bran new close-
fitting black, with white neckcloth and a cloak
with a sable collar two feet deep, looked a
veritable Amphitryon as he stepped forth with
M. Brisenoy from a drosky at the door of the
great restaurant in the Nevsky Prospekt, with
the grand air of a general about to commence a
campaign.

M. Cassecruche, in his plated spectacles, was
not merely grand; he was tremendous; he took
off his hat and hung it on a peg with the air of
a prince. With the dignified endurance of a
monarch he resigned himself to the bowing
waiters, who ran to remove his heavy furred
cloak. M. Brisenoy was a mere bourgeois shadow
beside this great type of office.

The groups of officers round the various tables
looked up for a moment with a certain knowing
look, as much as to say, "Here comes a
celebrated foreign professor, who is going to dine
with M. Brisenoy, the fashionable military tailor
of the Bolshoi Moskoi."

M. Cassecruche called for the carte. He
ran it down with a haughty and supercilious air—
an air half epicurean, half contemptuous. He
seemed to imply, "Gracious Heaven, here is
another day's dinner, and so horribly like the
last! Half my annual salary to any one who
will discover me a new dish. I am weary of
the luxuries of the Emperor Alexander's time."

"What shall we begin with?" said the
generous host, tossing the carte almost
contemptuously to M. Brisenoy.

"Oh, shtshee" (cabbage soup), "they make
it well here," replied the guest timidly, for he
was dazzled by the magnificence of his tenant's
new manner.

(Now, a true Russian cannot dine without
cabbage soup; there is indeed a proverb that
the three deities of Russia are "Tshin, Tshai, and
Shtshee"—official rank, tea, and cabbage soup.)

"It is poor stuff," said the professor, "but
I suppose we must begin with it."

There is but one way of beginning a Russian
dinner: You begin by eating a small section of
pickled fish, and drinking a gilt egg-cup full of
raw spirits.

M. Cassecruche ate a whole sardine, but with
strong protest—the waiter watched him with
awe and respect because he grumbled, made
faces, and complained. But when it came to
the spirits, he drew back like a pointer when it
comes upon a covey of partridges. He sipped,
he sniffed to show his hatred, contempt, and
disgust.

"Is this what you call Maraschino?"

"Yes, sir."

"The Maraschino of Zara?"

"Of Sarah?"

"Of Zara, blockhead."

"No, sir, it is not."

"Not of Zara! How dare you then bring a
French gentleman any Maraschino, ass, fool, but
that of Zara? Take the trash away."

M. Cassecruche uttered these complaints in a
loud and angry voice. The major looked round,
the two colonels smiled, the ensigns applauded
audibly.

"This is some great inostranez" (foreigner),
thought the waiter. "He is not accustomed to
our rough Russian ways. They do things
differently on the other side."

The soup came—cabbages, barley-meal, beans,
butter, salt, mutton, and cream, constitute what
is called by the Russians shtshee.

M. Cassecruche dipped in his spoon, and lifted
out a great yellow heap of macerated cabbages.
There was a fatal streak of green on the outside
leaf. He splashed it down with abhorrence.

"Away with it! Away with it, ape, fool.
Keep such stuff for your poor merchants. Order