IX.

A RUSSIAN HOLY CITY.

It was close on midnight when we left Yasnaya Polyana.  A large and merry party of Count Tolstoy’s children and relatives escorted us:  some in the baggage cart, perched on our luggage; some in the jaunting-car-like lineika with us, on our moonlight drive to the little station where we were to join the train and continue our journey southward.

We should have preferred to travel by daylight, as we were possessed of the genuine tourist greed for seeing “everything;” but in this case, as in many others in Russia, the trains were not arranged so that we could manage it.

There is very little variety along the road through central Russia, but the monotony is of a different character from that of the harsh soil and the birch and pine forests of the north.  The vast plains of this tchernozyom—­the celebrated “black earth zone”—­swell in long, low billows of herbage and grain, diversified only at distant intervals by tracts of woodland.  But the wood is too scarce to meet the demands for fuel, and the manure of the cattle, well dried, serves to eke it out, a traveling native in our compartment told us, instead of being used, as it should be, to enrich the land, which is growing poor.  Now and then, substantial brick cottages shone out amidst the gray and yellow of the thatched log huts in the hamlets.  We heard of one landed proprietor who encouraged his peasant neighbors to avoid the scourge of frequent conflagrations by building with brick, and he offered a prize to every individual who should comply with the conditions.  The prize consisted of a horse from the proprietor’s stables, and of the proprietor’s presence, in full uniform and all his orders, at the house-warming.  The advantages of brick soon became so apparent to the peasants that they continued to employ it, even after their patron had been forced to abolish the reward, lest his horses and his time should be utterly exhausted.

Minor incidents were not lacking to enliven our long journey.  In the course of one of the usual long halts at a county town, a beggar came to the window of our carriage.  He was a tall, slender young fellow, about seven-and-twenty years of age.  Though he used the customary forms,—­ “Give me something, sudarynya* if only a few kopeks, Khristi radi!"** there was something about him, despite his rags, there was an elegance of accent in his language, to which I was not accustomed in the “poor brethren” generally.

* Madam. ** For Christ’s sake.

I pretended ignorance of Russian and the sign language, but watched him as I continued my conversation in English.  Thereupon my man repeated his demands in excellent French, with a good accent.  I turned on him.

“This is unusual,” I said in Russian, by way of hinting that I belonged to the category of the willfully deaf.  “Accept my compliments on your knowledge of French and of Russian.  But be so good as to explain to me this mystery before I contribute.”