First they called on the great man, the
Horodnitchee, and found in his house a sweet,
timid wife, afraid to speak but full of smiles,
and the housekeeper's sympathy that finds a
vent through sweetmeats and confectionery,
and beside the social tea urn. The
Horodnitchee and his wife were obviously kind
people. Then Eve and Josephine, provided
with a letter of introduction from her
daughter in Tobolsk, called on Madame
Nizegorodtyow, the widow lady occupying
the great yellow house that had been so
conspicuous from the water. They found that
house fitted with mirrors, sofas, crystal and
china vases, flowers, and all the luxuries of
European wealth and taste, and they met there
also with a cordial reception. The rich old
dowager and her five married sons and their
families, and her five married daughters and
their families, all living in the place, clustered
about the lonely woman, and did the best
they could to cause the wilderness to blossom
for them. When Eve and Josephine, in search
of a cool breeze, walked down towards the
river, the young daughters of the poorer
Cossacks at first followed them in a body,
running after them, overtaking them, and in
a rude burst of sympathy covering them with
kisses. They pitied their solitude, promised
to do all in their power to amuse them while
they stayed at Berezov, and did all that their
good hearts could prompt, to show that they
meant to be gentle and loving with their
sisters in distress. Men and women are not
such bad fellows after all, and although
Christmas comes but once a year, the Christmas
spirit is not limited to a few weeks at
the conclusion of December.

One day the exiles, when they came home
to their lodging from this first encounter with
the Cossack girls, were annoyed at finding
their reception-room in great confusion, with
a pile of boxes of all kinds, rifles, yatagans,
pipes, ladies' dresses and tobacco bags, while
there lay stretched upon the sofa, smoking a
pipe, a stranger with cropped hair, in a man's
dressing-gown and boots. The stranger was
Madame X., an eccentric lady, who having
come to Berezov to see a mother and some
sisters who resided there, had quartered
herself in an off-hand way with the exiles,
whom she had seen previously for two hours
in Tobolsk. There was room in the house,
she said, for all of them, and she was sure
that it would be pleasanter for all parties if
they lodged together.

There was no resisting the intrusion, much
as the ladies regretted the distraction it
would cause to their own thoughts and
occupations. Now Madame X. went there
on purpose to distract them, and though she
was at first unwelcome, yet she did succeed
in giving so much occupation and amusement
to the thoughts of the exiles, that she
probably was right in thinking that she was
engaged on a good work. Madame X.
abhorred conventionality, dressed like a man
and went out hunting, fired pistols, rowed
boats, drove sledges and kept a collection of
arms. She had a husband who loved her
desperately, but no children. She kept a
pet goose that distracted Eve and Josephine
by waking from its sleep between two and
three o'clock every morning, and then
beginning the day's cackling. The ladies
relished this disturbance less, as they were
unable to fall in with the Siberian custom
of an afternoon siesta. The Berezovians are
great sticklers for rank; only the wives of
nobles, that is to say, government officials,
are permitted to wear caps. Madame X. had
therefore brought from Tobolsk caps and
bonnets of all kinds, with which she proposed to
amuse herself by getting up a social revolution.
Being informed, however, in a determined
way, when her intention became known,
that if she appeared in public in her new
apparel she was to be hooted, and that if
she wore a cap in church it would be torn
from her head and trampled under foot
before the congregation, she gave up her
design. She was a woman with a good
heart and with a deep sympathy for the
exiles; she amused them with her vagaries,
she introduced them to new friends, she
taught them all the mysteries of the game
of Boston, and whatever secret was worth
knowing of Berezovian society. She got up
ladies' boating excursions and set Eve and
Josephine rowing upon the Soswa with her,
blistering their hands. So she dwelt with
them for two or three months, after which
time she thought they might be considered
pretty well at home in Berezov, and went to
dwell among her own relations. Most eccentric
Madame X., whoever laughed at all your
oddities was much mistaken in his heart
when he saw you frolicking with the banished
mother and the young Josephine in that
far corner of the world. You are a good
woman, Madame X., in spite of all your
nonsense.

The Cossacks of Berezov, and, indeed, all
the people in the town, thrive without much
expenditure of toil. They fish during the
brief summer season, but they chiefly live
upon the Ostiaks. They are traders, not
producers. The Cossack Berezovians have,
indeed, become so degenerate a race through
a long course of feather-beds, that their young
men may be seen at the age of twenty,
crying like babies when they are kept waiting
for their tea. Even the fishing of the
Berezovians consists chiefly in the loading of
their ships with fish, obtained by barter from,
the Ostiaks and Samozedes.

The Ostiaks, on whom the Berezovians
live, know nothing of the use of metallic
money, their currency consists of skins. In
the exchange with these simple-minded people
the advantage taken is so enormous—here
we touch upon a darker side of human nature
—that any cunning speculator with a capital
of one or two hundred roubles, a knowledge