The next time I had occasion to hire quarters in a hotel for a sojourn of any length I resorted to stratagem, by way of giving myself an object lesson.  I looked at the rooms, haggled them down, on principle, to what seemed to me really the very lowest notch of price; I was utterly worn out before this was accomplished.  I even flattered myself that I had done nearly as well as a native could have done, and was satisfied.  But I sternly carried out my experiment.  I did not close the bargain.  I asked Princess——­to try her experienced hand.  Result, she secured the best accommodations in the house for less than half the rate at which I had been so proud of obtaining inferior quarters!  When we moved in, the landlord was surprised, but he grasped the point of the transaction, and seemed to regard it as a pleasant jest against him, and to respect us the more for having outwitted him.  The Princess apologized for having made such bad terms for us, and meant it!  I suspect that that was a very fair sample of the comparative terms obtained by natives and outsiders in all bargains.

It is one of those things at which one smiles or fumes, according to the force of the instinct for justice with which he has been blessed—­or cursed—­by nature.  Nothing, unless it be a healthy, athletic conscience, is so wofully destructive of all happiness and comfort in this life as a keen sense of justice!

There are, it is true, persons in Russia who scorn to bargain as much as did the girl of the merchant class in one of Ostrovsky’s famous comedies, who was so generous as to blush with shame for the people whom she heard trying to beat down exorbitant prices in the shops, or whom she saw taking their change.  The merchant’s motto is, “A thing is worth all that can be got for it.”  Consequently, it never occurs to him that even competition is a reason for being rational.  One striking case of this in my own experience was provided by a hardware merchant, in whose shop I sought a spirit lamp.  The lamps he showed me were not of the sort I wished, and the price struck me as exorbitant, although I was not informed as to that particular subject.  I offered these suggestions to the fat merchant in a mild manner, and added that I would look elsewhere before deciding upon his wares.

“You will find none elsewhere,” roared the merchant—­previously soft spoken as the proverbial sucking dove—­through his bushy beard, in a voice which would have done credit to the proto-deacon of a cathedral.  “And not one kopek will I abate of my just price, yay Bogu! [God is my witness!] They cost me that sum; I am actually making you a present of them out of my profound respect for you, sudarynya! [He had called me Madame before that, but now he lowered my social rank to that of a merchant’s wife, out of revenge.] And you will be pleased not to come back if you don’t find a lamp to suit your peculiar taste, for I will not sell to you.  I won’t have people coming here and looking at things and then not buying!”