It was obviously my turn to retort, but I let the merchant have the last word—­temporarily.  In ten minutes another shopkeeper offered me lamps of identical quality and pattern at one half his price, and I purchased one, such as I wished, of a different design for a small sum extra.  I may have been cheated, but, under the circumstances, I was satisfied.

Will it be believed?  Bushybeard was lying in wait for me at the door, ready to receive me, wreathed in smiles which I can describe only by the detestable adjective “affable,” as I took pains to pass his establishment on my way back.  Then the spirit of mischief entered into me.  I reciprocated his smiles and said:  “Ivan Baburin, at shop No. 8, round the corner, has dozens of lamps such as you deal in, for half the price of yours.  You might be able to get them even cheaper, if you know how to haggle well.  But I’m afraid you don’t, for you seem to have been horribly cheated in your last trade, when you bought your present stock at the price you mentioned.  How could any one have the conscience to rob an honest, innocent man like you so dreadfully?”

He looked dazed, and the last time I cast a furtive glance behind me he had not recovered sufficiently to dash after me and overwhelm me with protestations of his uprightness, yay Bogu! and other lingual cascades.

From the zest with which I have beheld a shopman and a customer waste half an hour chaffering an article up and down five kopeks (two and a half cents or less), I am convinced that they enjoy the excitement of it, and that time is cheap enough with them to allow them to indulge in this exhilarating practice.

What is the remedy for this state of things?  How are foreigners, who pride themselves on never giving more than the value of an article, to protect themselves?  There is no remedy, I should say.  One must haggle, haggle, haggle, and submit.  Guides are useless and worse, as they probably share in the shopkeeper’s profit, and so raise prices.  Recommendations of shops from guides or hotels are to be disregarded.  Not that they are worthless,—­quite the reverse; only their value does not accrue to the stranger, but to the other parties.  It may well be, as veteran travelers affirm, that one is compelled to contribute to this mutual benefit association in any case; but there is a sort of satisfaction after all in imagining that one is a free and independent being, and going to destruction in his own way, unguided, while he gets a little amusement out of his own shearing.

Any one who really likes bargaining will get his fill in Russia, every time he sets foot out of doors, if he wishes merely to take a ride.  There are days, it is true, when all the cabmen in town seem to have entered into a league and agreed to demand a ruble for a drive of half a dozen blocks; and again, though rarely, they will offer to carry one miles for one fifth of that sum, which is equally unreasonable in