The chief turned out to be a polished and amiable baron, with a German name, who was eager to render any service, but who had never come into collision with that post-office regulation before.  I remarked that I regretted not being able to certify to ourselves with our passports, as they had not been returned to us.  He declared that the passports were quite unnecessary as a means of identification; my word was sufficient.  But he flew into a rage over the detention of the passports.  That something decidedly vigorous took place over those papers, and that the landlord of our hotel was to blame, it was easy enough to gather from the meek air and the apologies with which they were handed to us, a couple of hours later.  The chief dispatched his orderly on the spot with my post-office petition.  During the man’s absence, the chief brought in and introduced to me his wife, his children, and his dogs, and showed me over his house and garden.  We were on very good terms by the time the orderly returned with the signature of the prefect (who had never seen us) certifying to our signatures, on faith.  The baron sealed the petition for me with his biggest coat of arms, and posted it, and the letters came promptly and regularly.  Thereafter, for the space of our four months’ stay in the place, the baron and I saluted when we met.  We even exchanged “shakehands,” as foreigners call the operation, and the compliments of the day, in church, when the baron escorted royalty.  I think he was a Lutheran, and went to that church when etiquette did not require his presence at the Russian services, where I was always to be found.

As, during those four months, I obtained several very special privileges which required the prefect’s signature,—­as foreigners were by no means common residents there,—­and as I had become so well known by sight to most of the police force of the town that they saluted me when I passed, and their dogs wagged their tails at me and begged for a caress, I imagined that I was properly introduced to the authorities, and that they could lay hands upon me at any moment when the necessity for so doing should become apparent.  Nevertheless, one friend, having applied to the police for my address, spent two whole days in finding me, at haphazard.  After a residence of three months, other friends appealed in vain to the police; then obtained from the prefect, who had certified to us, the information that no such persons lived in the town, the only foreigners there being two sisters named Genrut!  With this lucid clue our friends cleverly found us.  Those who understand Russian script will be able to unravel the process by which we were thus disguised and lost.  We had been lost before that in St. Petersburg, and we recognized the situation, with variations, at a glance.  There is no such thing as a real practical directory in Russian cities.  When one’s passport is vised by the police, the name and information therein set forth are copied on a large sheet of paper, and this document takes its place among many thousand others, on the thick wire files of the Address Office.  I went there once.  That was enough in every way.  It lingers in my mind as the darkest, dirtiest, worst-ventilated, most depressing place I saw in Russia.