we went a block about to avoid passing that shop.  The explanation of the affair was simple enough.  In our hotel there was a traktir, run by our landlord, tucked away in a rear corner of the ground floor, and opening on what Thackeray would have called a “tight but elegant” little garden, for summer use.  It was thronged from morning till night with Tatar old-clothes men and soldiers from the garrison, for whom it was the rendezvous.  The horse beef had been provided for the Tatars, who considered it a special dainty, and had been palmed off upon us because it was cheap.

I may dismiss the subject of the genial Mikhei here, with the remark that we met him the following summer at the Samson Inn, in Peterhoff, where he served our breakfast with an affectionate solicitude which somewhat alarmed us for his sobriety.  He was very much injured in appearance by long hair thrown back in artistic fashion, and a livid gash which scored one side of his face down to his still unbrushed teeth, and nearly to his unwashed shirt, narrowly missing one eye, and suggested possibilities of fight in him which, luckily for our peace of mind, we had not suspected the previous season.

Our chambermaid at first, at the Tzarskoe hostelry, was a lad fourteen years of age, who dusted in the most wonderfully conscientious way without being asked, like a veteran trained housekeeper.  We supposed that male chambermaids were the fashion, judging from the offices which we had seen our St. Petersburg hotel “boots” perform, and we said nothing.  A Russian friend who came to call on us, however, was shocked, and, without our knowledge, gave the landlord a lecture on the subject, the first intimation of which was conveyed to us by the appearance of a maid who had been engaged “expressly for the service of our high nobilities;” price, five rubles a month (two dollars and a half; she chanced to live in the attic lodgings), which they did not pay her, and which we gladly gave her.  Her conversation alone was worth three times the money.  Our “boots” in St. Petersburg got but four rubles a month, out of which he was obliged to clothe himself, and furnish the brushes, wax, and blacking for the boots; and he had not had a single day’s holiday in four years, when we made his acquaintance.  I won his eternal devotion by “placing a candle” vicariously to the Saviour for him on Christmas Day, and added one for myself, to harmonize with the brotherly spirit of the season.

Andrei, the boy, never wholly recovered from the grief and resentment caused by being thus supplanted, and the imputation cast upon his powers of caring for us.  He got even with us on at least two occasions, for the offense of which we were innocent.  Once he told a fashionable visitor of ours that we dined daily in the traktir, with the Tatar clothes peddlers and the soldiers of the garrison, with the deliberate intention of shocking her.  I suppose it soothed his feelings for having to serve our food in our own room.  Again, being ordered to “place the samovar” he withdrew to his chamber, the former kitchen of the apartment, and went to sleep on the cold range, which was his bed, where he was discovered after we had starved patiently for an hour and a half.