placed the letter with the imperial arms on it carefully at the bottom
of its usual pocket within the lining of his coat, over which he
fastened his belt; he then closed his bag and threw it over his
shoulder. This done, he had no wish to return to the City of
Constantinople, and intending to breakfast on the bank of the Volga near
the wharf, he settled his bill and left the inn. By way of precaution,
Michael Strogoff went first to the office of the steam-packet company,
and there made sure that the Caucasus would start at the appointed hour.
As he did so, the thought for the first time struck him that, since the
young Livonian girl was going to Perm, it was very possible that her
intention was also to embark in the Caucasus, in which case he should
accompany her.

The town above with its kremlin, whose circumference measures two
versts, and which resembles that of Moscow, was altogether abandoned.
Even the governor did not reside there. But if the town above was like a
city of the dead, the town below, at all events, was alive.

Michael Strogoff, having crossed the Volga on a bridge of boats, guarded
by mounted Cossacks, reached the square where the evening before he had
fallen in with the gipsy camp. This was somewhat outside the town, where
the fair of Nijni-Novgorod was held. In a vast plain rose the temporary
palace of the governor-general, where by imperial orders that great
functionary resided during the whole of the fair, which, thanks to the
people who composed it, required an ever-watchful surveillance.

This plain was now covered with booths symmetrically arranged in such
a manner as to leave avenues broad enough to allow the crowd to pass
without a crush.

Each group of these booths, of all sizes and shapes, formed a separate
quarter particularly dedicated to some special branch of commerce. There
was the iron quarter, the furriers' quarter, the woolen quarter, the
quarter of the wood merchants, the weavers' quarter, the dried fish
quarter, etc. Some booths were even built of fancy materials, some of
bricks of tea, others of masses of salt meat--that is to say, of
samples of the goods which the owners thus announced were there to the
purchasers--a singular, and somewhat American, mode of advertisement.

In the avenues and long alleys there was already a large assemblage of
people--the sun, which had risen at four o'clock, being well above the
horizon--an extraordinary mixture of Europeans and Asiatics,