e.

I pretended ignorance of Russian and the sign language, but watched him
as I continued my conversation in English. Thereupon my man repeated his
demands in excellent French, with a good accent. I turned on him.

"This is unusual," I said in Russian, by way of hinting that I belonged
to the category of the willfully deaf. "Accept my compliments on your
knowledge of French and of Russian. But be so good as to explain to me
this mystery before I contribute."

"Madam," he retorted, "I'd have you know that I am a gentleman,--a
gentleman of education."

"Then pray solve the other mystery,--why you, strong, young, healthy,
handsome, are a professional beggar."

He stalked off in a huff. Evidently he was one of that class of "decayed
nobles" of whom I had heard many curious tales in Moscow; only he had
decayed at a rather earlier age than the average.

As we proceeded southward, pretty Little Russian girls took the place of
the plainer-featured Great Russian maidens. Familiar plants caught our
eyes. Mulleins--"imperial sceptre" is the pretty Russian name--began
to do sentinel duty along the roadside; sumach appeared in the thickets
of the forests, where the graceful cut-leaved birch of the north was
rare. The Lombardy poplar, the favorite of the Little Russian poets,
reared its dark columns in solitary state. At last, Kieff, the Holy
City, loomed before us in the distance.

I know no town in Russia which makes so picturesque and characteristic
an impression on the traveler as Kieff. From the boundless plain over
which we were speeding, we gazed up at wooded heights crowned and dotted
with churches. At the foot of the slope, where golden domes and crosses,
snowy white monasteries and battlemented walls, gleamed among masses of
foliage punctuated with poplars, swept the broad Dnyepr. It did not seem
difficult then to enter into the feelings of Prince Oleg when he reached
the infant town, on his expedition from unfertile Novgorod the Great, of
the north, against Byzantium, and, coveting its rich beauty, slew its
rulers and entered into possession, saying, "This shall be the Mother of
all Russian Cities." We could understand the sentiments of the pilgrims
who flock to the Holy City by the million.

The agreeable sensation of approach being over, our expectations, which
had been waxing as the train threaded its way through a ravine to the
station, received a shock. It was the shock to which we were continually
being sub