there yourself, had you been in my place, and I in yours. What is the use of being born in the nineteenth century if one is to eke out one's days amongst a herd of cut throat barbarians? Frankly, sir, I should not have troubled you if I had foreseen such an offer as this."

"Confound you, you forget to whom you're speaking!" shouted the little apple-faced statesman with indigna

tion.

"No, I know I am speaking to my uncle," answered Prince Moleskine naïvely, "though I confess you have shown little feeling of kinship for me in this circumstance. All our other relatives have been enriched by you. It would have cost you nothing to give me a good place. It isn't out of your purse that the salaries are paid." The poor fellow's disappointment was so keen that he was uttering his thoughts with a frankness upon which he would never have ventured had he taken time to reflect what a very sorry helpmate is plain speaking.

66

we

"Hark you, my nephew," said the Minister, throwing a furious glance at the young man, I advise you to keep a look-out over that tongue of yours, otherwise it will be getting you into trouble. What have you ever done for me, I should like to know, that I should take you in hand, and enrich you? I am not speaking here of affection, for affection is a commodity which Ministers learn to dispense with. But you might have been of use to me. A man with the fortune and position which you had, can always make himself serviceable, even when he throws his money out of the window. You have been six years in Paris and have been spending at the rate of a million francs a year. What have you to show for your money? Have you a single friendship that can help either of us, have you acquired a grain of influence in diplomatic circles, have you taken a lead in French society and made yourself a name, have you secured any allies for me in the Paris press? God knows you could have coaxed half the journalists of the capital over to our side had you chosen to try! But no, you have made a fool of yourself, and that is all. I have watched you narrowly; you have never laid out a sou that can bring you in any

interest. You have stupidly fittered away every kopeck of a fortune that could have made you one of the most popular gentlemen of Europe had you invested it adroitly. Your habitual associates have been simpletons; you have never courted the society of respectable women, so that there is not a drawingroom in Paris where you can be said to have any footing. If I send you back to France as secretary of legation, or to one of the small courts of Germany as envoy, we should both of us be laughed at, for you enjoy the reputation of being a noodle. Here is this Himalaya question in which we are involved. Is there a single newspaper in Paris that would publish a leading article for you, taking our view of the case? No, the whole Paris press is dead against us; the only intimate acquaintance you seem to have amongst journalists is this crack-brained M. Roquet, who has so high an opinion of your intelligence that he hopes to make a red republican of you after a few weeks' intercourse."

"And what if he does? I don't think I have much inducement to be an Imperialist," muttered Prince Moleskine, bitterly, though he marvelled that his uncle should be so well informed as to the designs of the Frenchman. "Before this Emperor of ours emancipated the serfs, my estate was one of the most flourishing in the country. Now half my fields lie fallow; my tenants are emigrating to the south. The agent writes to say that he can get nobody to work, and not a kopeck of rent. I ought to be in the receipt of half a million roubles a year, and I am a beggar."

"Do you think any of us liked the emancipation of the serfs?" hissed the Minister, rising and speaking close to his nephew's car. "I, too, should have been beggared if I had not been where I am. But the thing is done now, and neither you nor I can undo it. Don't be a fool, Paul Petrowich; take this place I offer you. There's many a man better off than you are who would go down on both knees to have it. In a few years, I tell you, it will make you rich, and then we can see and give you something better."

"I won't go to the Caucasus," replied Prince Moleskine, out of temper and unreasonable from his disappoint

ment. "I'd rather go and live on my estate, hole as that is."

"Then go to your estate," said the Minister, in a rage. 66 Only, I will tell you what, my nephew. So long as you were cutting your capers in Paris you didn't hurt me. Here it is different. I've as many enemies as white hairs on my head; and if you were to play any tricks in this country, or talk liberal trash within earshot of anybody, some of the responsibility would be sure to fall upon your relatives, myself amongst the number. Now you've ruined your self, but I'm determined you shan't ruin me. You can go back to your estate; but I shall have a sharp watch kept over your actions and speeches; and as for that M. Roquet, he shall be conducted back to the frontier this very day. He can mean no good by coming here, and we've enough Radicals of our own without being in need of foreign importations. That's all I've got to say. Goodmorning."

"You can do your worst," said the Prince, defiantly. "I will do what I "I will do what I please, and say what I please, and have what friends I please."

The Minister shrugged his shoulders and rang the bell; and with this exchange of amenities the interview terminated.

III.

The Minister did his best to have M. Jean-Jacques Roquet conveyed under escort to the frontier, but it was much less easy than he had thought. M. Roquet screamed and barricaded himself in his room, and harangued the hotel waiters. Prince Shepskine was not so firmly rooted in the favor of the Court as to risk doing an arbitrary act without a shadow of pretext. His main objection to the Frenchman was, that, being a notorious republican, his intimacy with the nephew of a Minister might give rise to unpleasant gossip amongst the crowd of envious folk who lie in ambush round men in high places to traduce and supplant them. But when he saw what a noise the man of letters was disposed to make, he thought it prudent to let him alone, or, rather, to reserve the persecution of him for some more convenient opportunity. Prince Moleskine stuck valiantly by his friend,

though, in his heart of hearts,-having nothing but trouble to expect in his company, he wished him at Kamtschatka. The police were instructed to offer an apology, and to declare that they had mistaken M. Roquet for somebody else which they did with extraordinary good grace and civility. M. Roquet seized upon the occasion to ask for his printing-press, his works on political economy, his manuscript and his Revue des Deux Mondes. The police gave him a blank form of petition to fill up, and after driving to seven dif ferent Government offices and conversing with twenty-three clerks, the journalist was assured that inquiries would certainly be made, and that he might call for an answer in six or seven weeks' time.

Prince Moleskine, however, was in a hurry to be off, and hastened his preparations for that purpose. St. Petersburg is only supportable to those who

have money.

The Prince's ruin was better known among his own countrymen than it was in Paris, and it is never particularly agreeable to be stared at and pointed at, and even tittered at, as poor Prince Moleskine apprehended he would be, if he ventured to go into society. As for M. Roquet, the sedulous attentions of the man in the braided cap, who followed him closely wherever he went, had ended by giving him the nightmare. He, too, was anxious to be gone, and he heaved a sigh of relief when he found himself in the heavy landau that was to bear him away to the province of Tcheremiss. In addition to the Prince's valet, groom, and cook, who journeyed everywhere with their master, the travellers were this time accompanied by a house-steward, who had been engaged at St. Petersburg. He was recommended by the landlord of the hotel, and was a Pole, with a shock of red hair, and a surprising talent for murdering every language in Europe. He talked to the Prince's valet in German; to his cook in Italian; to his groom English, and completely ingratiated himself with M. Jean-Jacques Roquet, by declaring that though his-M. Stanislas Milkiewickz's-body was in Russia, yet his heart was in France, in the land of Danton and Roquet! The journey was as painful a pilgrimage as any man could

in

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wish to his bitterest foe, as an expiation for a life of sin. Save in winter, when the roads are frozen, and one can ride in sledges, heaven help the bones of the Russian traveller! Ruts two feet deep; branches of trees lying across the roadway; huge flints as big as cannonballs; and every couple of hours a breakdown, with no houses or light, no wheelwrights within twenty miles to set matters straight, and a fierce howling savage wind sweeping up clouds of dust to blind the horses, and choke the passengers. Here, the landau comes to a dead standstill, embedded up to the axletrees in slush, and the travellers have to get out and push and tug, and perspire until they are wet through, and covered from top to toe with mud. Further on, the harness breaks in two or three places at once, and has to be mended with bits of string, pockethandkerchiefs, braces, or with one's necktie. One of the horses then lies down in the dirt, and refuses to move The Russian driver takes to coaxing: "My little father, my pigeon, my pretty cousin, don't lie down so and break the heart of your poor isvostshick." This occupies about half-an-hour, during which the travellers blow on their finger-tips, and flatten their noses against the window-panes, to see if there is a village within view. The roadside inns have nothing to offer one but a brick floor to sleep on. People take their own provisions with them; if not, they must put up with bread, a few shades darker than the schwarz-brod of Germany, and infinitely more sour. Perhaps also they may get a piece of raw ham, derived from a gaunt, thin pig, tough and stringy; but this is problematical. To crown the pleasures of the voyage, one must exhibit one's passport and road-bill five or six times a day at the posting-houses; and if one has let either of them drop in one of the numerous breakdowns, there is nothing for it but to go back all the way and get another. A Russian postmaster would allow himself to be hashed into mincemeat sooner than allow you to pass without the written official order.

It was exactly five weeks after setting out from St. Petersburg, that the Prince, his friend, and suite, drove up the mossgrown avenue, which led to Moleskine

Hall, or Moleskine Castle, eighty-three versts from the town of Oufa, and twenty from the River Kama. The house had an imposing appearance, and gave the beholder an idea of regal pomp, until he got inside and saw the faded furniture, damp walls, cracked ceilings, and general look of desertion and squalor that hung about the old place, which had not been inhabited by a Moleskine since the time of the Emperor Paul. It took the two friends a week to organize themselves comfortable quarters, by selecting the best of the chairs and tables, the carpets and curtains with fewest holes in them, and the rooms which had least suffered from decay. Prince Moleskine was evidently humiliated at showing himself so considerably reduced from his Parisian splendor; but he was no longer sorry that M. Jean-Jacques Roquet had accompanied him, for life would have been simply unbearable in such a place without a companion. The journalist on his side bore everything remarkably well. Before leaving Paris, he had obtained a commission as travelling correspondent to a daily paper, and he was no sooner settled in his new abode, than he fell to work writing astonishing letters upon the things he had seen and passed through. Editors were only afraid of M. Roquet when he took to handling French affairs. There was no objection to his abusing Russia, and the Russian Government, so that M. Roquet gave his pen and imagination full play. Unfortunately, as we shall see by and by, all his letters were stopped by the police; whence posterity has been deprived of the pleasure of reading many pleasant chapters, and doubtless of acquiring much novel information.

M.

Three months passed in an uneventful manner, the days succeeding each other monotonously. Up to mid-day the Prince was generally busy with his agent, either riding about the estate, or going over accounts with him to see what could be made of his dilapidated budgets. Roquet during the same time wrote, with admirable care and zeal, the letters which were never to reach their destination, or busied himself about the first chapters of his work in three volumes on the Social Regeneration of Russia. In the afternoons the friends used often to go out shooting, the game on the estate being

as abundant as if a gun had never been fired in the district. However, there is the stuff of a conspirator in every rad ical Frenchman, and M. Roquet was not the man to confine himself to exploits entirely harmless and peaceful. He had not come to Russia to enjoy himself, he was bent on dabbling in political achieve ments of some sort, and he had by no means abandoned his idea of preaching what he called his doctrines of truth among the moujiks. Unfortunately, there was no possibility of starting the light-disseminating Harbinger in the district. In the first place there was no printer within four-and-twenty hours' journey, and in the next, none of the peasants, with the exception of the priest, the postmaster, and the tax-gatherer, could read.

M. Jean-Jacques Roquet was rather of the opinion of Cæsar, that it is better to be first at Moleskine than second at Rome. The little man could not do without his incense, and the homage of a posse of worshippers. He longed to see the honest, squab faces of the peasants gathered round him admiringly, and he cursed the difficulties of the Russian language which stood in the way of his addressing them on topics political and social, and awakening them to a sense of their degradation. He did not confide any of his sentiments on this point to his host, for he had noticed with chagrin that the Prince was less amenable than he had hoped to the language of truth and liberty; but he took into his confidence the excellent Pole, Milkiewickz, who appeared filially devoted to him and expressed his readiness to abet him in any schemes he might form for overturning anything or overthrowing anybody.

It was a great comfort to the zealous Frenchman to have this faithful Pole with him. M. Stanislas Milkiewickz agreed with everything he said, and was the person who always rode with his letters to the post, so that they might be in safe hands. When pressed to it by the journalist, M. Milkiewickz would tell a heart-rending tale of the afflictions which his family had endured at the hands of the Russians. At certain passages he used to tear his red hair out in large bunches, and run his head against the wall with avowed intention of putting an end to his miserable life. It took

M. Roquet an immense deal of bodily strength and oral persuasion to reconcile him with existence: on a certain occasion the two fell into one another's arms and wept.

How not feel confidence in such a man? One day M. Roquet revealed to him a scheme for holding secret socialist meetings among the peasantry of a neighboring landholder, with an ulterior view to provoking an agrarian revolution.

The landholder upon whose tenants M. Roquet proposed to begin his work of enlightenment was a wealthy prince, who lived in St. Petersburg in winter, at Baden or Gastein in summer, and, like most Russian noblemen of fortune, never came near bis estate save once in the course of every five years, to levy extra supplies of money. Of course M. JeanJacques Roquet could not do his friend Prince Moleskine the ill-service of exciting his peasantry to sedition, but he had no terms to keep with Prince Moleskine's neighbor, and it pleased him to think he might organize a rising by means of occult meetings held after nightfall in caverns or out-of-the-way barns, like the early Christians of yore, and the Albigenses. It was arranged that the Reformer should write his Harbinger in manuscript, and that Stanislas Milkiewickz should translate it into Russian, read it aloud to the peasants, and give copies of it to the two or three cultivated moujiks who could read.

It should be mentioned that the peasants were in as hopelessly miserable a condition as it is possible for human beings to be. The emancipation had not done them much good, rather the contrary; for whilst they had been serfs they had always had food enough and clothes enough, whereas ever since they had been set free they had thought it better to remain idle than to work, and had borne the inevitable consequences. As far as it was possible to understand their ideal of a perfect social system, they expected their landlord to feed and clothe them for nothing, that is, without exacting labor or rent. They were very drunken, and, of course, servile beyond conception. On first arriving at Moleskine, M. Roquet had turned red with indignation on seeing that a peasant who brought him a letter knelt down in the mud on both knees to deliver it. He