deep bass voice, to enter the second door on
the left through the court-yard, and mount
two pair of stairs. Here, in but a seedy
little bureau for so grand a mansion, I
find a little round old gentleman in a grey
flannel dressing-gown and a skull-cap, who
looks more like my uncle Toby than
a Russian, offers me snuff from his box
(a present from the Czar, perhaps), and
courteously desires to know what he can do
for me. I explain my errand, upon which
the little old gentleman shakes his head with
Burleigh-like sagacity, as if granting a visâ
to a passport were no light matter, and,
securing my papers, begs me to call again at
three o'clock the following day. I call again
at the appointed time, when it appears that
the little old gentleman—or, at least, his
diplomatic chiefs—have no orders, as yet, to
admit English subjects into Russia; so there
are telegraphic messages to be sent to
Warsaw, where Count Gortschakoff is, and who
most courteously telegraphs back, "By all
means;" * and there are papers to be signed,
and declarations to be made, and there is
the deuce and all to pay. When all these
formalities have been satisfactorily gone
through, I begin to think it pretty nearly time
for the passport to be ready, and ask for it;
but the little old gentleman, shaking that
head of his with much suavity, suggests
tomorrow at a quarter to four. The chief
secretary of legation, he says, is at Charlottenbourg,
dining with the king, and without his
signature the passport is not valid. I call
again; but I suppose the secretary must
be taking tea with some other member of
the royal family, for no passport do I
receive, and another appointment is made.
This time I see my passport bodily, lying on
a table, and by the amount of Russian
hieroglyphics and double eagle stamps covering
every available blank space on its surface, it
ought surely, to my mind, to be good from
Revel to Tobolsk. But it is noch nicht
fertig,—not yet ready—the little old gentleman
says. He speaks nothing but German
—so, at least, he blandly declares; yet I
notice that he pricks his ears up sharply, and
that his eyes twinkle, when an irate Frenchman,
whose errand is the same as mine (only
he has been waiting ten days), denounces the
Russians, in his native tongue, as a nation de
barbares. I begin myself to get exceedingly
cross, and impatient to know when I am to
have the precious document; whereupon the
little old gentleman looks at me curiously, as
if he didn't quite understand what I meant,
or perhaps as if I didn't quite understand his
meaning.

* In that meritorious philo-Russian organ, the Nord,
I saw, a few days since, an anecdote, apropos of
telegraphic despatches, which, I think, will bear translation.
Lord Granville, according to the Nord, had commissioned
one Sir Acton to engage a house at Moscow for him. Sir
Acton telegraphs to Lord Granville to know whether the
terms demanded for the house will suit his lordship
whereupon Lord Granville telegraphs back, "Yes, my dear."

"Where do you live in Berlin?" he asks,
suddenly.

I tell him that I am stopping at the Hôtel
de Russie, in which with a smile of five
hundred diplomatist power, he makes me a bow,
and tells me he will have the honour of
bringing me the passport this present evening,
at six o'clock. I ask if there is any
charge for the visâ; but, with another smile
that would set a sphynx up in business on
the spot, so inscrutable is it, he assures
me that the visâ is Gratis, gratis, and
bows me out. I go home to dinner, and
discourse to Mr. Erenreich on my passport
tribulations.

"When he comes this evening," says this
worthy landlord, "you had better give him a
thaler at once. Otherwise you may perhaps
find that he has left the passport at the
Legation, and that it is impossible to
obtain it before to-morrow."

The little old gentleman is punctual to his
appointment, and I no sooner catch sight of
him in the darkened salle à manger, than I
hasten to slip the necessary note into his
hand. He makes me a profusion of bows,
and gives me my passport,—gutt nach
Russland, as he expresses it. "Gutt nach
Russland." When I spread the passport
on the table, and recal the little old gentleman's
words, I can't help feeling somewhat
of a thrill. "Gutt nach Russland"—here
are the double eagles, and the paragraphs
scrawled in unknown characters, and my
name (I presume) in such an etymological
disguise that my wisest child, had I one,
would despair of recognising his own father
in it. Yet the expenditure of three shillings
has made me "good for Russia." But
yesterday there was a gulf of blood and fire,
and the thunder of a thousand guns between
England and Russia! the Ultima Thule of
St. Petersburg was as inaccessible to an
Englishman as Mecca or Japan, and now, lo,
a scrap of a stamped paper and a few pieces of
gold will carry me through the narrow channel,
that, ten months ago, the British government
would have given millions to be able to
float one gun-boat on.

"Itsch chost von Daler," says the
commissionnaire with the umbrella. What he
should want a Prussian dollar from me
for, or why, indeed, he should exact
anything, passes my comprehension. He walked
into my bed-room at the Drei Kronen this
morning, at a dreadfully early hour with
his hat on, and his umbrella (a dull crimson
in hue) under his arm. He bade me good
morning in a cavalier manner, and informed
me that he was the commissionnaire, to
which I retorted that he might be the Pope,
but that I wanted none of his company. The
boots was packing my luggage, and he
superintended the process with a serenely patronising
air, thinking possibly, that on the principle
that "l'œil du maître engraisse le cheval," it
is the eye of the comrnissionnaire that cords