—again to confer, I suppose, with his little
brothers and sisters, or with Neptune, or the
Nereides, or the Great Sea Serpert, "The
ape and pig,'',  says the vexed Starosta, "threw
himself into the bed while I was at Mestrophan's
mill.  I could sober him in a moment
with a bucket of water, but your excellencies
will understand that I do not want to spoil
the pastyel (or bed), which is of great civlation
(civilisation), and came from Moscow,
where my eldest son Dmitri has been an
Ischvostchik-Macter for twenty years, paying
one hundred and eighty silver roubles
yearly to his lord and ours, the Barynn
Vacil- Apollodorovich (M. de K.), and owning
himself fourteen droschkies with their
horses."  Apparently fearing that he had
let the cat somewhat out of the moneybag .
in alluding to the prosperous condition of'
his son Dmitri, the Starosta hastened to;
assure Alexis that the obrok (or yearly slave-rent)
was a frightfully hard thing for a
poor Christianin to pay, and that what
with that and the police and the government
dues, his poor Dmitri had nothing to
feed or clothe his children with. " This is
his son," he adds, pointing to the part of the
counterpane where the oily drunkard had
last foundered with all hands, and his cargo
of green wine on board: "judge what we are
able to do with such a cow's-nephew as this
on our hands! However, if your excellencies
will deign to pardon me, I will soon rid you
of this Turk's- brother's presence."  I don't
know what Alexis answers to this harangue,
but I hasten to assure the Starosta with
much gesticulation, and many harostros and
nitchevos (all right and never mind), that I ,
have not the slightest objection to the drunken
man in the bed, and, as he is quite dumb,
that I rather like his revolving lighthouse
appearance than otherwise. The Starosta,
however, apparently convinced that he or
Sophron must be sinning against etiquette
in some way or other, makes a last desperate
plunge after that shipwrecked convivialist.
He brings him to the shore after much
puffing and blowing, and rolls or drags his
long body across the floor and out at the
front door, where, from some dull heavy
sounds, and a terrific howling,  I presume
that he is correcting his grandson with a
joint-stool, or a log of wood, or a crowbar, or
a hatchet, or some switch-like trifle of that
description. Then I hear the slush of the
proposed bucket of water. The Starosta
comes in, and re-apologises to Alexis; and
when Sophron rejoins us, which he does in
about ten minutes to fill the samovar, he is,
though still very damp and somewhat tangled
about the hair, and purply-streaked about
the face, as grave, sober, and likely a young
Russian as ever wore a red shirt and made
beautiful bows.

I have spoken of the image of the saint.
It is here that the Starosta's commercial
secret oozes out.  It is here that the paucity
of copecks, and the sibilation in the fists for
hunger becomes notorious as airy fabrications.
Like every Russian peasant shopkeeper-merchant
—from the miserable moujik of a crown-village
to the merchant of the first guild with
his millions of roubles—Nicolai Iatchkoff, the
Starosta's pride and pleasure is to have a joss
in his house, as handsome as ever he can
afford it to be. And a brave St. Nicholas he
has. The picture itself is simply hideous—a
paralytic saint with an enormous aureole, like
a straw hat, sitting in a most uncomfortable
attitude upon a series of cream-coloured
clouds in regular tiers, like the wig of the
Lord Mayor's coachman. It is painted, or
rather daubed, in the most glaring and
coarsest oil-colours; but the aureole above
the saint's head is formed of metallic rays of
a certain dull, yellow, Guinea-coast like
appearance that make me certain though the
Starosta would probably call St. Nicholas
himself to witness that the contrary was the
fact—that these rays are of pure gold. And
there are some rings on St. Nicholas's fingers,
and some stars on his alb and rochet, and a
great bulb on his pastoral crook, that are
green, and white, and crimson, and glisten
very suspiciously.  I have an idea that they
are emeralds, and carbuncles, and seed pearls,
my friend Nicolai.  I know the massive,
chased, and embossed lamp that hangs, always
kindled, before the image to be silver; the
picture itself is covered with a fair wide
sheet of plate-glass; the whole is framed in
rosewood, carved and gilded in great profusion;
and I should not at all wonder if the
original cost of this image to the soi-disant
impoverished Starosta had been five hundred
silver roubles at the very least. St. Nicholas
is one of the most popular and most
considered of the Russian saints, and the late
Czar probably owed no small portion of his
immense influence to the fact of his bearing
the same name as that saint of high renown.
Touching St. Nicholas, there is a ludicrous
tradition current among the Russian
peasantry to the effect that he once had a
theological dispute with Martin Luther, and
that they agreed to settle it by a walking-match.
It was to be so many hundred versts
up a mountain, and neither party was to have
any assistance beyond a stout walking-staff.
For once the Protestant champion was
victorious, for St. Nicholas was thoroughly blown
before he had accomplished half the journey.
The detested heretic came back triumphant,
but with empty hands. " Where's your
walking-stick, dog's son? " cried the good
St. Nicholas. "An't please you, I ate it,"
answered his opponent. The wary Doctor
Martin Luther had had a walking-stick
constructed of good black-puddings twisted
together, and had eaten as he walked the
creature comforts giving him such bodily
strength that he had easily overcome his
antagonist.

The large ground-floor apartment, as it