r letters ten days after
those you first send off. In five weeks, if all goes well, you may
expect an answer. In the meantime, I hope you will find enough to amuse
you here, although the opera is closed, and there will be nothing like
gaieties this season; still, there will be dinner parties and the club;
and when you feel that you want a change I have an estate some five
hours' sledge drive from here. It consists largely of forest, but there
is plenty of game, elk and bears. If you are fond of shooting I can
promise you good sport."

"Thanks, indeed, Count. I am quite sure that I shall not be tired of St.
Petersburg in five or six weeks' time, and as for shooting, I do not
feel at present as if I should ever care to fire a gun again, certainly
not to take life, unless to satisfy hunger. I have seen so many horses
and dogs die, and have felt so much pity for them that I do not think
that I shall ever bring myself to take the life of a dumb beast again. I
am afraid I became somewhat callous to human life. I have seen thousands
of men die, and came somehow to regard it as their fate; and certainly,
during the retreat it came in most cases as a happy release from
suffering. But I could never, to the end, see a horse that had fallen
never to rise again, or a starving dog lying by its master's body,
without having intense pity for the poor creatures, who had, through no
fault or will of their own, come to this grievous end. No doubt you, as
a sportsman, Count, may consider this as overstrained feeling. I am
quite willing to admit that it may be so. I can only say that at present
I would not fire at an elk or a bear on any condition whatever."

"I can understand your feelings. I myself have had the cry of a horse
pulled down by wolves, in my ears for days, and I can well imagine how
the sight of so much suffering day after day among thousands of animals
would in time affect one."

The next three weeks passed most pleasantly for Julian. Every day there
were calls to make, excursions to various points to be undertaken, and
dinner parties nearly every evening, either at the count's, at the
houses of his friends, or at the club. He found French almost
universally spoken among the upper class, and was everywhere cordially
welcomed as a friend of the count's. The latter was sometimes questioned
by his intimate acquaintances as to his English friend, and to them he
replied, "Monsieur Wyatt is the son of a colonel in the English ar