As to the men, they are Apollos of the Belvedere, not so simply clothed, having the air of princes, and I should like to know if they are not so.  Are they not descended from them?  But I will genealogize later on.  Let us continue our exploration at full stride.  A minute lost is ten lines of correspondence, and ten lines of correspondence is—­that depends on the generosity of the newspaper and its managers.

Quick to the grand caravanserai.  There you will find the caravans from all points of the Asiatic continent.  Here is one just coming in, composed of Armenian merchants.  There is one going out, formed of traders in Persia and Russian Turkestan.  I should like to arrive with one and depart with the other.  That is not possible, and I am sorry for it.  Since the establishment of the Transasiatic railways, it is not often that you can meet with those interminable and picturesque lines of horsemen, pedestrians, horses, camels, asses, carts.  Bah!  I have no fear that my journey across Central Asia will fail for want of interest.  A special correspondent of the Twentieth Century will know how to make it interesting.

Here now are the bazaars with the thousand products of Persia, China, Turkey, Siberia, Mongolia.  There is a profusion of the fabrics of Teheran, Shiraz, Kandahar, Kabul, carpets marvelous in weaving and colors, silks, which are not worth as much as those of Lyons.

Will I buy any?  No; to embarrass oneself with packages on a trip from the Caspian to the Celestial Empire, never!  The little portmanteau I can carry in my hand, the bag slung across my shoulders, and a traveling suit will be enough for me.  Linen?  I will get it on the road, in English fashion.

Let us stop in front of the famous baths of Tiflis, the thermal waters of which attain a temperature of 60 degrees centigrade.  There you will find in use the highest development of massage, the suppling of the spine, the cracking of the joints.  I remember what was said by our great Dumas whose peregrinations were never devoid of incidents; he invented them when he wanted them, that genial precursor of high-pressure correspondence!  But I have no time to be shampooed, or to be cracked or suppled.

Stop!  The Hotel de France.  Where is there not a Hotel de France?  I enter, I order breakfast—­a Georgian breakfast watered with a certain Kachelie wine, which is said to never make you drunk, that is, if you do not sniff up as much as you drink in using the large-necked bottles into which you dip your nose before your lips.  At least that is the proceeding dear to the natives of Transcaucasia.  As to the Russians, who are generally sober, the infusion of tea is enough for them, not without a certain addition of vodka, which is the Muscovite brandy.

I, a Frenchman, and even a Gascon, am content to drink my bottle of Kachelie, as we drank our Chateau Laffite, in those regretted days, when the sun still distilled it on the hillsides of Pauillac.  In truth this Caucasian wine, although rather sour, accompanied by the boiled fowl, known as pilau—­has rather a pleasant taste about it.