memories of her better days and stirred in her a submissive sense of her cheerless fate.

Pavel was meanwhile putting the case of the Polish woman to Onufri, one of the two servants who accompanied[10] them in their present travels—a retired hussar with a formidable moustache in front of a pinched hollow-cheeked face.

[10]

“Her highness, your mother, is good as an angel, sir,” was Onufri’s verdict.

“And you are stupid as a cork,” Pavel snarled. His sense of the desecration to which the person of his Czar was being subjected by mingling with people like the widow of a hanged rebel rankled in his heart. He worked himself up to a state of mind in which the very similarity in physical appearance between the untitled people with whom the Czar and born aristocrats like himself and his mother were compelled to mingle at a place like this resort struck him as an impertinence on the part of the untitled people.

Later when he lay between two German featherbeds and Onufri brought him his book and a candle he asked him to take a seat by his bedside.

“Why are you such a deuced fool, Onufri?”

“If I am it is God’s business, not mine, nor your highness’.”

“Look here, Onufri. How would you like to have all common people black like those darkies?”

The servant spat out in horror and made the sign of the cross.

“For shame, sir. What harm have the common people done you that you should wish them a horrid thing like that? And where does your highness get these cruel thoughts? Surely not from your mother. For shame, sir.”

“Idiot that you are, it’s mere fancy, just for fun. There ought to be some difference between noble people and common. There is in some countries, you know.”[11] He told him about castes, the slave trade in America and passed to the days of chivalry, his favourite topic, until the retired hussar’s head sank and a mighty snore rang out of his bushy moustache. Pavel flew into a passion.

[11]

“Ass!” he shouted, getting half out of bed and shaking him fiercely. “Why don’t I fall asleep when you tell me stories?”

Onufri started and fell to rubbing one eye, while with his other eye he looked about him, as though he had slept a 

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