pinch and stint than an average Bushman can play the part of Beau Brummel in the London of to-day. He regulates his budget as behooves a firm believer in the doctrine that it is more blessed to give than to receive; scatters money lavishly to the right and to the left, giving away his last hundred roubles as royally as if he had a Fortunatus' purse to fall back upon. There are scores of needy wretches in want of a dinner, who once were rich men, in St. Petersburg, Odessa, Moscow, Kieff, who built up their own fortunes almost in a night, and then scattered them to the winds as if they were all mere gold of Tolosa. There used to be a Scotch beggar in London who attributed his poverty to a single miscalculation. He began, it appears, at the age of thirty-five to spend a fortune of £20,000, unexpectedly left to him, at the rate of £1,000 a year, living in ease and idleness the while, in the belief that his span of life would not exceed sixty years; and after the rapid flight of some twentytwo or three years was stupefied to find himself healthy and a beggar. None of the Russian spendthrifts whom I ever saw or heard of could with truth allege that they entertained any, even the most slipshod, calculations before frittering away a fortune.

On the other hand it cannot be denied that hot haste in the pursuit of riches is a characteristic of the Russian merchant, and does much to intensify that spirit of improbity which it did not create. Many merchants are so impatient to do business that they cannot even wait till their customers enter their shops, but must needs sally forth, lay violent hands upon them, and drag them in. This is at bottom the same kind of ardor that the mythical Lien Chi Altangi observed in the London shopmen of last century, only duly intensified and Russianized. There,' cries the mercer, showing me a piece of fine silk, there's beauty. My Lord Suckeskin has bespoke the fellow to this for the birthnight this very morning; it would look charmingly in waistcoats. But I do not want a waistcoat,' replied I. 'Not want a waistcoat!' returned the mercer; then I would advise you to buy one. When waistcoats are wanted, depend upon it they will come dear. Always buy before you want, and you are sure to be well used, as they say in Cheapside.' You are certainly very ill-used at times if you do

not buy before you want in Russia, where brute force so often does duty for persuasion. A friend of mine walking for the first, and last, time in his life along the streets in the Apraxin Dvor-a sort of miniature city composed of the shops and stores of the genuine Russian chapmen, whose manners, morals, and mercantile methods have been admirably painted by the playwright Ostroffsky-was forcibly drawn into a ready-made clothes shop, his coat slipped off and another fitted on in the time it takes to tell it. He pleaded, protested, threatened; the assistants alternately bullied and cajoled him, but after a long struggle released him amid a shower of picturesque epithets. He had not had time enough to collect his scattered senses, when he was lifted bodily into a trunk store and shown a capacious trunk. "But I don't want a trunk, not even gratis," he apologetically pleaded. "Well, this is gratis, or nearly so, only fifteen roubles." "But I assure you I do

not

"Oh! you think it's not the best of its kind. Well, sir, God is witness that you won't get a better trunk in all Petersburg, nor a cheaper. You are not used to bargaining? We like honest men of your stamp, take it for ten roubles."

"Let me go; I will have none of your trunks." "Not till you've seen some more. Ivan, take the gentleman up-stairs and show him all the trunks we have. Take your time, sir; a trunk is bought not for a day or a way, it's for a lifetime, sir. But my friend, who preferred a money loss of ten roubles to unknown and possibly more serious sacrifices, paid the money, had a droschky called, and drove away.

The newspapers have been constantly full of complaints of the same description. "Moscow knows,' says the Russian Courier of Moscow, "what the Knife Row is, and St. Petersburg realizes what the Cerberi of the Apraxin Dvor are, how they fight among themselves over a customer, how often a whole squadron of them fall foul of a passer-by, drag him into their shop and violently force him to buy something. The police-courts in Petersburg, where a long series of prosecutions have arisen from attacks on the public in the Apraxin Dvor, treat the merchant Cerberi with all the severity of the law."*

* Russian Courier, July, 1887.

Laws

in Russia, however, are seldom efficacious for long and we find the Police Prefect of Warsaw ordering all merchants in that city to bind themselves over to cease in future from dragging passers-by into their shops and warehouses, and threatening them with all the rigors of the law if they break their promise.* Such violence is not always visited on the purchaser only. At Saratoff the other day a gentleman entered the shop of a fish salesman, named Krynkin. While he was making a selection, a fishmonger a few doors off, entered, seized the inoffensive customer by the throat and dragged him into his own shop. Krynkin expostulated, but was knocked down and severely beaten by his rival, who then returned to serve the unhappy man whom he had dragged along the street like a shark. There were a number of people looking on, but they only took a speculative interest in the proceedings. The strokes of business that are daily done in those stores and warehouses by shaggy-bearded, inoffensive-looking barbarians would prove a revelation to Ah Sin himself. The following sketch is taken from the journals, and can be vouched for as characteristic. A middle-class state functionary enters a ready-made clothes shop to purchase a suit of clothes or a coat. When trying it on he notices in one of the pockets an article of value (a watch, silver cigar-case, &c.) put there designedly by the tradesman. The intending purchaser covets the watch as well as the coat, and keeps his own counsel. He pays the price demanded almost without haggling, such is his anxiety to leave the shop. The tradesman charges twice as much as under ordinary circumstances, and having received the money, stops the happy purchaser who is rapidly gliding from the shop, with the words, I beg your pardon, but I forgot to take my watch from your pocket," and having removed it, adds, "You may go now, many thanks." The other day a certain N. went into one of these shops to purchase an overcoat. He was exposed to the above-described temptation and succumbed. Seduced by the massive silver cigar-case stuck in the pocket, he paid £2 12s. for an article worth £1 10s. at most, and at the threshold of the door he was relieved of his prize and left the shop meditating revenge. A few days later he

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* Odessa Messenger, 27th July, 1887.

returns to the same stores, treats for a morning coat, puts it on and feels the inevitable cigar-case. Having hastily substituted a tin cigar-case silvered over for the genuine bait, he haggled a little to save appearances, declined to buy, and went his way.

When the theft was discovered the tradesman was naïf enough to bruit it abroad and to inveigh against the rascality of the St. Petersburg public ;* forgetting that dishonesty is less the monopoly of any one profession than a talent lying latent in all his countrymen, waiting only for the occasion, like the Eolian harp for the caressing breeze.

If the Russian public were alive to its own vital interests, nothing less than force would cause it to consume many of the articles of food that are sold in the shops. When such an article as pepper is adulterated to the extent that a pound of that condiment contains but two ounces of real pepper, and a pud (about thirty-seven pounds), which sells for twenty-four roubles, costs the vendor only three, one can form an adequate idea of the proportions assumed by adulteration. Two years ago a correspondent of the Moscow Gazette interviewed a well-known Moscow winemerchant, whose piety is equal to his business qualifications. This is what they said to each other :- How is business?'' "We can't complain, thanks be to God. Last year I sold no less than 80,000 bottles of Madeira alone.' "Where did you get such a large quantity of that wine? The island of Madeira produces altogether 10,000 barrels (?) of wine, of which only 3,000 come to Europe. The wine-merchant smiled and answered, "God sends

it.

What do you suppose I pay a chemical expert 3,000 roubles with board and lodging for? And what profit could I make if I sold mere wine? It would cost me from 44d, to 54d a-bottle; I might sell it for 8d. or 9d. If I were to conduct my business like that I might just as well throw the beggar's sack over my shoulder at once. It's a vastly different thing if out of this wine you fabricate Madeira, and a bottle of it costs you 9d. or 1s., while you sell it for 3s. or 48.; that's what I call business." "Yes, but that is adulteration, falsification," I objected. "Now you're a man of education,' said the merchant," and yet you call my

* Novoye Vremya, 18th August, 1888.

Madeira an adulteration. Do you eat beetroot?" "Yes." "And is sugar made of beetroot !" Undoubtedly." "Well, and do you call sugar a falsification. And when the confectioner makes sweetmeats from sugar, is that adulteration ?" "No doubt confectioners' sweets are at times harmful and even poisonous; but your sherries and Madeiras, with their nox ious ingredients, are extremely common, and you are seriously injuring the health of those who consume them-sometimes you poison them outright." The merchant smiled and answered according to his piety: "If God does not send death, you may drink any stuff you like, and you will be safe and sound. And if you drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you.' Do you know whose words these are? If you know you are bound to believe. You may drink water without praying over it and sicken.” *

Occasionally the police, dissatisfied with their share of the spoils, make a raid and seize on a hogshead or two of alcoholic poison, or a chest of sand called tea, and prosecute the public poisoner. But long before the unwieldy machine of the law can be brought to bear upon him he again makes friends with the mammon of iniquity, and the "wine" and "spirits" in the casks carefully sealed up by the law officers, mysteriously changes to pure water or evaporates. In such cases, says an Odessa journal, either the vodka completely disappears from the vessel, which was sealed with the seal of the Revenue Office, or at the very least it changes to water. Adulteration of food is common to all countries, and even in England people are slow to realize the extent to which they are imposed upon by unscrupulous speculators. The special features of the Russian practice, however, are its universality, openness, and the impunity enjoyed by the merchants whose profits are dependent upon it. Coffee bought in Moscow in April, 1887, for 1s. 6d. per pound was analyzed. It was fine quality to look at, and had a delightful aroma. Many of the berries, however, appeared less brightlooking than the others, and when taken ont and examined by the analyst of the

* Moscow Gazette, October, 1887; cf. also Saratoff Gazette, 23d October, 1887.

Cf. Odessa News, 20th June and 4th July, 1888, where cases of transformation and evap

oration are described in detail.

university were found to consist of clay mixed with chicory, without a trace of coffee.*

Turning to banks and counting-houses, we find that they have become a byword in Russia. It is only a few days since that a new law was launched against the sharp practices of some of the best known and apparently respectable banks of St. Petersburg t-a law which will prove as efficacious as the feather of a young humming bird employed to tickle the side of a healthy rhinoceros. Within the eight years most of the "best" banks in Russia have stopped payment, and tens of thousands of peasant farmers, clergymen, widows and orphans who put their trust in these establishments approved by the Government were turned adrift on the world to beg from door to door. The horrors of war have been many a time described with realistic vividness by artistic pens in prose and verse. It would require a masterly hand to depict the wailing and the weeping, the cries of anguish, the looks of despair, the suicides, the robberies, the hideous crimes and heartrending sufferings that ensued upon the failure of the banks of Skopin, Kozloff, Orel, wherein were swallowed up millions of roubles laboriously scraped together by the thousand of units within whom, in spite of all their inborn recklessness, stirred a faint perception that providence and thrift might after all be worth a fair trial. The tale of wholesale, cold-blooded spoliation that was unfolded during the trials of the galaxy of swindling bankers who have reduced thousands to beggary during the past eight or

* The following is taken from an official report on teas supplied by well-known firms :— Green tea, 148. a lb. Of poor quality; contains boiled tea leaves, and is largely colored with ultramarine. Black tea, 48. 4d. a lb. : Contains very little tea, mixed with boiled tea leaves and willow herb, colored with burned sugar; 27 per cent. of sand. Reddish tea, 48. a lb. : 60 per cent. of boiled tea leaves and 12 per cent, of sand. Black tea, 3s. 9d. a lb. : Contains no tea; is made of boiled tea leaves, elm and willow herb; 40 per cent. of sand. Black tea, 58. 5d. a lb.: 50 per cent. of willow

a

herb and elm leaves. Black tea, 68. 6d. 8 lb. : 50 per cent. of boiled tea leaves, and others of a plant unknown; colored with logwood; 7 per cent. of sand.-Warsaw Diary, 16th April, 1888.

+ Cf. Journal de St. Pétersbourg, 26th September, 1889. Graschdunin, 26th September, 1889. Novoye Vremya, 26th and 27th September, 1889, &c., &c.

ten years, might well cause any but the most sanguine patriot to despair of the future of Russia.

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Men can never wholly escape the influence of their age and country; and it is to be regretted rather than wondered at that enlightened physicians, men of science, whose education and mission would seem to give promise of better things, should compete with professional swindlers in this inglorious race for ill gotten wealth. Last spring a wealthy gentleman called upon a well known and respectable" dentist of Moscow, reputed to be a brilliant light in his profession, and ordered a complete set of teeth in gold. When it was ready his expectations were fulfilled to the utmost in all but the color of the metal. 'Excuse me, doctor, ," he said, but is this pure gold?" The scientific light blazed out angrily: "How can you doubt it? For whom do you take me, sir ?" on which the gentleman felt ashamed of himself and left. He went straight to a chemist's laboratory, however, and had the usual tests applied, when it was made evident that the metal was copper without a trace of gold anywhere.* "Our hydrotherapeutic establishments," says one of the principal organs of the St. Petersburg press, "under cover of philanthropic advertisements, announce that they charge, say, twenty-five roubles for a course of treatment. A patient of scanty means believes and begins the course, and it is soon made clear that he has been lured into a swindling trap. They charge him for everything as extras, and, instead of twenty-five roubles, exact forty-five or even fifty. The patient, not possessing the means of defraying these unforeseen expenses, is first stripped of everything of which he can be relieved, and then turned out when half the course is over. He is thus fleeced of his money, gets no benefit in return, and sometimes incurs positive harm by abrupt ly breaking off a drastic water-cure."t

It would be no easy matter to point out a trade, a profession, a calling followed by genuine Russians, in the code of which elementary honesty has a place. It is not merely the unwritten law, the vague, shadowy borderland of sharp practice that lies between nere infamy and the more pal. pable terrors of stone walls and iron bars,

*Novoye Vremya, 13th April, 1889. + Graschdanin, 18th September, 1889.

that is daily encroached upon, but the Rubicon of the Penal Code is continually passed with a calm tranquillity that guaranteed immunity from mere human penalties could scarcely justify. The bland simplicity with which wholesale robberies are carried on for years within the knowledge of the public, the priests, and the police, amazes even travellers who have lived long in China. That light weight, now as of yore, should be eked out by heavy stones,* that trade-marks should be forged; food adulterated; goods despatched to distant purchasers which are infinitely inferior to the samples that elicited the orders, is no doubt highly reprehensible, but might still, perhaps, be glossed over as venial errors by a moralist willing to make allowances for exceptional human weakness under strong temptation. But notorious vulgar robbery, propped up with perjury, forgery, and every conceivable form of chicanery, and raised to the dignity of one of the recognized methods of trade by representative men of good standing, who can yet be religious without blasphemy, and edifying without hypocrisy, would seem in sober truth to imply a standard of ethics specifically different from that of civilized nations.

There is a curious class of discount booksellers in Russia who thrive and prosper while the fate that continually threatens and often overtakes the publishing firms whose works they trade in is insolvency and ruin. Vast palatial buildings that yield a handsome yearly income prove that they drive a brisk trade in books, and give the lie to the saw, that honesty is the best policy. Their method is simple: they usually fee young apprentices of the principal publishing houses to steal whatever books are in demand, and to deliver to their own boy apprentices, who are also members of the conspiracy, as many copies of them as may be required by their customers. That the consciences of these tradesmen give them no uneasiness needs no more convincing proof than the fact that some of them are bringing up their own children to the business. Nor could

Take as a typical instance the firm of Messrs. Weingurt, of Odessa, who received from the factory with which they deal and sold to their own customers without having previously verified it, sugar in which to nine cwts. of sugar there was one cwt. of stones (Odessa News, 7th December, 1887).

it well be otherwise. Trade is held in high esteem by men of all countries, classes and confessions, and to their thinking trade is merely the art of robbing your neighbor without exposing yourself to his vengeance. The first part of this definition is tersely expressed by the proverb, "Wherein one deals, therein one steals, "while the moral blamelessness of robbery could scarcely be proclaimed with greater force than in this other proverb: Why not steal, so long as there's no one to hinder it.

Another of these booksellers, we are told, did a thriving little trade, in addition to the sale of books, in wax candles made by the monks, in accordance with the canons of the church. He obtained the candles in the same way that he came by the volumes the little boys who were assisting the monks to sell them being paid to steal them. 'He was often detected, and occasionally threatened with the legal consequences of his acts." It was on these occasions, we are told, that the religious principles to which he always

66

tenaciously clung buoyed him up and bore him safely out of danger. "I say, Masha !" he would cry out to his wife who was sitting in a little parlor inside, "take a wax candle, a good thick one, mind, and run off and light it before the icon." And his faith was strengthened by the knowledge that his fervent prayers for a way out of the difficulty were always heard and granted. A less pious colleague was proportionably less fortunate, and once had to stand his trial. He made up in sharpness, however, for what he lacked in piety, and " wriggled out of the accusation in a truly masterly manner." Chatting after his acquittal with his neighbor, the man who had prosecuted him for the theft, "What a greenhorn you are, to be sure!" he exclaimed. 'If, when you caused the raid to be made on my shop, you had only looked under the counter, you would have found all the stolen books there. But it's evident that, to punish you for your litigiousness, God turned your eyes away."-Fortnightly Review.

Ar Mandres, not far from Paris, stood, in the year 1612, a little house like a toy castle, with turrets and a moat. Its owner was a retired officer named Meurdrac, a soldier who had fought in more than twenty battles under Henri Quatre, but who had become lame with rheumatism and compelled to leave the army. He was now a man of forty-five, with a red beard, a huge mustache, a face tanned to parchment, and keen sparkling eyes. He wore, summer and winter, a buff coat, top-boots, and a rapier. His character was quick and fiery. His cane was the terror of his groom and lackey; and he would rather have laid his head upon the block than have changed the least of his opinions.

Monsieur Meurdrac had built himself a house at Mandres in order to be near the Castle of the Duc of Angoulême, his oldest friend. When his house was finished, he looked about him for a wife. He chanced to meet at Paris a bewitching demoiselle of twenty-five, good, lovely, NEW SERIES.-VOL. LI., No. 2.

14

and sweet-tempered. They married and in the month of February, 1613, a little girl was born, whom they called Jacqueline.

This child's life was destined to be distinguished from the common lot by three particular events-a love story, an adventure, and a tragic death. And these three scenes are the romance of history which we now intend to tell.

The girl combined her mother's beauty with her father's fiery spirit. As she grew up, Jacqueline, like other maidens, stitched and spun, worked pictures on her tambour-frame, and woke the strings of her guitar; but her heart's delight was to fire off her father's musket, to practise with her fencing master, to swim across the river Yères, or to mount her palfrey and scour the country like the wind. eighteen she had grown into a girl of dazzling beauty-the Dulcinea of rival cavaliers for ten miles round. On Sundays,

At

Novoye Vremya, 21st October, 1888. Ibid.