estate, will just pay it, if he can get them reaped
in time. Then, of course, there must be a
wrangle about the conditions of the purchase,
and, perhaps, while that is going on, he may
be able to sell the land over again. At all
events, he has not yet given up possession, and
has no intention of completing the transaction
for many a day. So my prince goes to sleep
very contentedly, and wakes up, after a stage or
two, to sing duets with his wife till the end of
the journey.

So the crop is re-sold, the debt of honour is
paid, and months roll uneventfully away. My
prince is at St. Petersburg, or elsewhere, doing
a larger business than ever, and merely flashes
from time to time, like a comet, upon the
benighted country districts. But his wife is still
residing, as lady of the land, upon the estate
sold to the orange-dealer. That worthy has long
ago convinced himself that it would not be
prudent to disturb her; and can only shriek his
complaints to the winds in lonely places, or
whisper them softly to the wall in the strict
privacy of his own apartment when the doors
are locked. Otherwise he might have to do
with the secret police, who are retained by the
omnipotent magnate who has cozened him.

The land is all bare, quite bare, as if it had
been occupied and plundered by a hostile army.
Not an ox, or a sheep, or a chicken throughout
the length and breadth of it; nothing but a few
lean swine and an old goose or two, who
escaped by a miracle when my prince swept everything
off to pay the debt of honour. The princess
lives chiefly on dried mushroom-soup and
maize-pudding; sometimes her chief butler—an
indispensable personage in all Russian
establishments—forages for a roebuck or a hare.
This, with a salted cabbage, when it can be got,
is the poor lady's diet; and she is contented,
seeing that she has got a stock of the prince's
cigars, which were left behind by accident, to
comfort her. But time wears on apace, and
the land must be sown. Here is a dilemma.
There is not a single grain left of last year's
crops for seed-corn. The hawk-eyed man who
came from Nicolaiev with the carts swept every
grain of it into them. Dooyoumalski, on urgent
appeal, telegraphs to his wife to beg some of a
neighbouring prince, who is not a pedlar, but a
staid prosperous gentleman, and who was, moreover,
an old friend and admirer of the poor lady.
Subsequently, lest his telegram should be
incomprehensible, as most Russian telegrams are,
my prince himself composes a pitiable and
romantic tale for her, which he sends, in a registered
letter, by post. Here he discusses the
arguments most likely to obtain the seed-corn,
and draws a touching picture of his own
recklessness. His wife copies and sends this letter
in her own name to the good neighbour, whose
eyes grow dim when he reads it. He at once
replies that he will give what is asked of
him, and feels his heart grow warmer as his
messenger, on the fleetest pony of his herd,
passes over the hills at a canter.

So Demetri, the chief butler, is despatched
with a long string of carts to bring the seed-corn.
These are borrowed from one of the
prince's clients, who happens just then to be
under sentence for forging a will, and who
knows my prince can get it promptly reversed.
So that things generally favour the lady, and
all difficulty of transport is overcome this once
without need of ready money.

A full week has elapsed since the chief butler
ought to have returned; but he does not appear.
After a few days more, however, somebody else
comes instead. This is a German pedlar. He
is a very different person to his princely fellow-
tradesman; but he is quite as well known and
indispensable an individual; for nothing whatever
can be done in Russia without a
go-between, and he is that go-between. He and his
brethren so swarm over the land, that it is hard
to buy a block of firewood or a quire of writing-
paper without their interference. Direct dealing
of all kinds is unknown, and all business must go
through a middleman. Thus, though the small
pedlar, whose operations are confined to one
locality, is not so fine a fellow as the great pedlar,
he has nevertheless a thriving trade of his own,
which is quite as profitable in its way, as well
as even steadier and quicker in its returns.
The small pedlar comes to say that he knows all
about the chief butler. That excellent man
has fallen ill; and he has been to Yassy.
He will arrive in a few days. So says the
pedlar, and, as he says it, his demeanour presents
a fine study of semi-barbarous manners. He
is more abject and self-abased in his humility
than is readily conceivable by the British mind.
Yet he knows that the tawdry forlorn lady
before whom he prostrates himself is absolutely
in his power, and is unable to move hand or
foot but by his permission. All struggle against
him is out of the question; his web is far too
wide and too strong to render escape possible.
His humility is merely part of his stock-in-trade.
It is profitable; there is no dealing with a
princess without it; that is the secret of it—
nothing more.

By-and-by the chief butler does return. But
his aspect is lugubrious. He has a doleful
story to relate. He has been insulted,
outraged, on his mission. In vain he has
protested; he has done all and more than a man
can do; but the neighbouring prince's agent
has afflicted and beaten him (not the
neighbouring prince himself, who is all goodness, but
his agent). The chief butler weeps. He
requires to be comforted with hot tea and kind
words before he can explain that, in
consequence of the insults heaped upon him, he
has but a poor account to give of the seedcorn.
He has been all the way to Yassy, to
offer an image to the church of his patron saint
there, in order that his journey might be
prosperous (here the chief butler crosses himself);
yet Fortune has not gone with him. His
language is very picturesque and beautiful as he
relates these mishaps, and he flatters his
mistress now and then with infinite address. As
for the seed-corn, there is some, such as it is,
but not much; and that is spoiled. Most of the
oxen sent with the carts died on the way to