We found L——­ ready enough; indeed, we had kept him waiting.  He had most of his staff with him, and the usual escort of Cossacks standing by their horses, making it seem very official.  Of course, L——­ became furious when he saw the big crowd of people, and asked whether it was going to be a picnic.  This word tickled one of the drunken officers so much, that suddenly he let his loose legs relapse and clapped his spurs into his animal, which reared horribly, and in the end sent him on the ground.  I thought I should die of laughter.  Then everybody became more and more fussy, because they were afraid of L——­, but, fortunately, the general started off ahead, muttering to himself, and we rode after him like some procession.  It seemed to me very absurd, and at that point I lost all confidence in the success of the expedition.  Everyone had become too sanguine, and I fully believe that you cannot have any luck in such affairs with a crowd of idiots.  Other people, who had no business to know of the affair, somehow managed to join us on the way, and when we reached the Board of Revenue we numbered dozens of men, not including the escorts.

There were about two companies of Russian infantry in occupation there, as I have already said, and in the first halls we found armed guards superintending hundreds of small Chinese boys at work stringing together copper cash.  There must have been millions and hundreds of millions of these worthless coins either piled up in great mountains or scattered on the floors, and it would take months to sort them out and market them.  It was the only thing the cunning Japanese had openly left!

L——­ now called the officers of the guard, and explained to them that he was about to seize secret treasure which had been so well hidden by the Chinese that the Japanese had not been able to find it.  He told them to give their assistance.  The new officers, when they heard this, looked so sharply at one another, that everyone began to comment on it, and say that if there was nothing left they knew who was guilty.  It was becoming delightful.

We started off in a body with the ku-ping, or treasury guards, who were giving the information, leading us.  They took us past a good many huge buildings that looked like grimy old warehouses, and then stopped us short at one that appeared to be still barred and bolted.  It took some time to open these doors, although the officers of the guard said that they had only been closed after they had taken over the place from the Japanese; and when we got inside it was so dark and dank that we could see nothing and could scarcely breathe.  Candles had to be lighted, and as they threw feeble flickers of light across the gloom, hideous bats began flying madly about, and dashing to the ground in their fright great shreds of dusty cobwebs that must have been centuries old.  Nobody minded that, however; it seemed just the sort of place where millions could really be found in these prosaic days!