y at play, or had committed some
terrible blunder in company. The plaster covering the houses, soaked by
the rain, had fallen away in many places from their walls, which from
white had become streaked and spotted, whilst old reeds served to thatch
them.

Following a custom very common in the towns of South Russia, the chief
of police has long since had all the trees in the gardens cut down to
improve the view. One never meets anything in the town, unless it is
a cock crossing the road, full of dust and soft as a pillow. At the
slightest rain this dust is turned into mud, and then all the streets
are filled with pigs. Displaying to all their grave faces, they utter
such grunts that travellers only think of pressing their horses to get
away from them as soon as possible. Sometimes some country gentleman of
the neighbourhood, the owner of a dozen serfs, passes in a vehicle which
is a kind of compromise between a carriage and a cart, surrounded by
sacks of flour, and whipping up his bay mare with her colt trotting by
her side. The aspect of the marketplace is mournful enough. The tailor's
house sticks out very stupidly, not squarely to the front but sideways.
Facing it is a brick house with two windows, unfinished for fifteen
years past, and further on a large wooden market-stall standing by
itself and painted mud-colour. This stall, which was to serve as a
model, was built by the chief of police in the time of his youth, before
he got into the habit of falling asleep directly after dinner, and of
drinking a kind of decoction of dried goose-berries every evening. All
around the rest of the market-place are nothing but palings. But in
the centre are some little sheds where a packet of round cakes, a stout
woman in a red dress, a bar of soap, some pounds of bitter almonds,
some lead, some cotton, and two shopmen playing at "svaika," a game
resembling quoits, are always to be seen.

But on the arrival of the cavalry regiment everything changed. The
streets became more lively and wore quite another aspect. Often from
their little houses the inhabitants would see a tall and well-made
officer with a plumed hat pass by, on his way to the quarters of one of
his comrades to discuss the chances of promotion or the qualities of a
new tobacco, or perhaps to risk at play his carriage, which might indeed
be called the carriage of all the regiment, since it belonged in turn
to every one of them. To-day it was the major who drove out in i