"Amongst the travellers was a strange figure, around which the inquisitive mob assembled, with expressions of the utmost wonderment. It was that of an old man, hard upon eighty, but who, nevertheless, sprang into the carriage, and took his seat beside a young Russian lady, with an air of juvenile vigour. From his chin and furrowed cheeks fell a venerable gray beard, half concealing the diamond-studded order of St Anna, which hung round his neck, whilst upon his left breast four or five other stars and crosses glittered from under the black Russian caftan, and his bald head was covered by a red Turkish fez, to the front of which a leathern peak was sewn. 'Who can he be?' murmured the curious Armenians and Tartars, who could not reconcile the old gentleman's brilliant decorations with his coachman's caftan and Turkish cap. 'Certainly a general, or perhaps a great lord from the emperor's court--a man of the first _tschin_!'--'Or mayhap a foreign ambassador!' quoth others. 'Since he wears the fez, he must come from Stamboul.' A Munich _gamin_ would have enlightened the good folks of Erivan. The interesting stranger, as some of my readers may already have conjectured, was no other than Baron Von Hallberg of Munich, (known also as the Hermit of Gauting,) my much-respected countryman. I made the acquaintance of this remarkable man, and great traveller, in 1836, at Algiers, where we passed many a cheerful day together, in the society of some jovial fellow-countrymen. After a lapse of seven years, I again met him at Tefflis, and we travelled together to Armenia. Since our parting at the foot of Atlas, he had visited the pyramids of Egypt, and the ruined temples of Heliopolis, and now the unwearied traveller thirsted after a sight of the capital of Persia's kings. He had come down the Wolga, and over the Caucasus, and was about to cross the Persian frontier."