When we dismounted at the end of our stage, there was a little adventure that made me blush, I must admit, for my French gallantry. We met here two women, who had been waiting the whole day long, till the posting master was pleased to give them horses to continue their journey. This autocrat had at last relented just before we came up; the horses were put in their sledge, and they were going to start at once, when Constantine presented our Crown podarojnaia order. “That is my last troïka,” exclaimed the master of the relays; “I shall be obliged, I am sorry to say, to my great regret, to keep you waiting here——”
“Take the horses out of that sledge,” said Constantine authoritatively, perfectly indifferent to the distressing embarrassment into which he had thrown these two poor travellers.
I did not clearly understand the affair at first, but I doubt whether, after having examined these two personages, my gallantry would have overruled my selfishness, for their departure or detention depended on the one or the other. If at night all cats are grey, in Siberia all women swaddled for a journey are uniformly unattractive; and the face, besides, is disfigured with a look of uncleanliness from intense and prolonged cold.
I do not know what Don Quixote would have done in the presence of these two Dulcineas: as it was quite impossible for me to follow them, the only alternative was to precede them.
The reader will soon learn what followed from this incident. I am ashamed to say I had the cowardice to approve, at least by my silence, Constantine’s decision; and we continued our journey, without any other adventure, as far as Perm, where we arrived on the 26th of December at daybreak.
CHAPTER VI.
PERM—THE ROAD TO CATHERINEBURG.
Hotel accommodation in Siberia—A councillor—Opinions and examples of Russian administration—National music—The passion for aggrandizement of territory—Entry into Asia.
Though Perm is still within the limits of Europe, it has quite the aspect of a Siberian city: the houses are constructed of wood, without upper stories, and disposed without regularity with regard to one another. Its position reminds one a little of that of Nijni-Novgorod. Overlooking the Kama from the summit of a hill, Perm commands beyond also, from the same eminence, an immense plain covered with forests.