of so far rousing him that, when he looked up
through his long tangled hair and saw a baron
standing over him inquiring for some one to
take the horses in hand, he jumped up and dived
in at a side-door, bawling, "Gregory! Visitors!"
Following close at his heels I found him tearing
at the beard of another fellow, who was sleeping
on a wooden bench. Gregory being awakened
and informed of what was wanted, dived into a
passage, shouting, "Evan! Visitors!" Finding
that I had not yet got at the right man, I again
followed, and, crossing a back court, entered an
outhouse filled with straw. Here, I found Gregory
pulling Evan by the legs out of his comfortable
bed of straw. As soon as he became sensible
that visitors were at the door with horses, Evan
seized a long pole with an iron hook on the end
of it, plunged it among the straw, and, after
various failures, ultimately succeeded in fishing
out by their grey ragged coats his two stable
assistants. Thus reinforced, he leisurely
proceeded to the front and took possession of our
cattle. The battering-ram was ready by this
time to act his part of lackey, and conducted us
into the house. Several female heads popped
out at various doors as we passed on, indicating
a numerous if not a select retinue, and our
conductor presently opening a door at the end of a
passage, shouted "Visitors!" and left us on the
open threshold. Advancing a few steps, we were
in the presence of the lord and lady of the
"souls," the pigs and dogs, vermin and devils.

The master of the house was an invalid. On
one side he was nearly powerless, and he had
partly lost his speech from palsy. His other
side, however, was still serviceable, and with
his sound arm he was flourishing a crutch at a
red-shirted peasant who stood within reach: nor
did it end in a flourish, for the crutch came
down upon the moushick's back as I entered.
I wondered the fellow did not run; but, looking
down, I found that he was tied to the
great arm-chair in which his paralytic lord was
cushioned. The man's offence was, that in
exercising the razor on his master's face he had
made a deep gash. That he might be safely
within reach of punishment the poor fellow was
always tied to the chair while he dressed his
master.

On a sofa lay a lady of portentous dimensions,
enveloped in a loose robe by no means carefully
arranged. Her face was hidden by a dense mass
of very long hair, and in her arms she held a cat
of Russian breed and wondrous size. On her
knees on the floor was a young woman, who had
in one hand a large comb, while the other grasped
the locks of her lady, and she combed and
searched and scratched, and picked away the
particles of scurf which are apt to collect on
all heads and all hair. Cleaner skins, cleaner
heads, and cleaner hair, do not exist anywhere
than among Russians of this class, for the
process through which madame was going is a daily
process, in which she and all the Russian ladies
take delight. As the baron was still making
wild efforts to castigate the unfortunate barber,
and as his lady seemed unconscious of our
presence, I turned to my companions for counsel.
But the young birds were flown. I was alone
in that august presence. Thinking discretion
the best part of valour, I precipitately followed,
and soon found my companions, by the sound of
their laughter, in another room. There we waited
nearly half an hour, during which time I
received the following items of information
regarding our baron, which, as he is one of a large
class, shall be repeated.

He had been an official in an hospital department,
or something of that kind, at Cronstadt or
Petersburg, for many years. It was his duty
to buy and dispense the stores and necessaries.
His salary was below two pounds a week, and
this seemed to suffice for payment of the rent of
a good house, and enable him to keep a good
table, and entertain good company. It had given
his daughter an expensive education, and a dowry
of more than two thousand pounds on her
marriage-day. It had educated his son, a young man
now nearly ready to enter the army as an officer;
and had kept him in pocket-money. It had
bought the Black village, and made its paralytic
owner a baron. Finally, it had kept his widowed
sister, the Tartar, for twelve years on the estate,
as factotum, in the absence of the baron
himself. But age and inefficiency will make
themselves manifest even in government places, and
the baron had now retired to enjoy nobility on
his estate, among the hundred and seventy souls,
out of whom he had always tried to get the
utmost amount of work and obrok, and from
whom he received with daily curses the least
possible amount of service.

"Ah, this horrid emancipation proposal!" said
his sister to me, after she came in and ordered
coffee. "It is a most shocking act of injustice
on the part of the emperor. His father was a
gentleman, and would never have done such a
wicked thing. He is a ——Well! We shall all
be ruined. My brother paid twenty thousand
roubles for this estate and the souls on it, and
by what right does the emperor take them from
us without sufficient compensation? We are
already feeling the bitter effects of it. Not one
of these moushicks will work for us if he can help
it. Even last summer a great part of our rye
crop was suffered to rot on the fields, because I
could not get them to cut it down in time. Think
of ten souls, out of seventy, coming to the reaping-
field, and these ten cutting only twenty-five
sheaves a day each, instead of one hundred,
which they can easily cut if they choose!"

Here a servant entered the room carrying
coffee-cups, followed by another with bread,
and a third with the coffee-pot. Madame looked
and cried:

"Where is the cream, you fool?"

"There is no cream, baroness."

"No cream!" screamed madame, "and six
cows in the stable!"

Off she ran to make sure. One of the cows
had got to the cream and lapped it all up.

"Are you boiling the eggs?"

"Baroness, there are no eggs."

"No eggs, and a houseful of poultry!"