Being still in the skies to a certain extent, I longed for a hat of greater dignity, to make a better bow withal; but still I stood up as an Englishman should, in the presence of the biggest foreigner, until he knows more about him. I have thought sometimes that as every player at chess, golf, or billiards, knows almost at the first contact when he has met his better, so we (without any sense of rivalry, and without being ever on the perk about ourselves) by some wave of Nature's hand along the scale of her gifts to us, are aware, without a thought, when we come into converse with a larger mind. Not of necessity a quicker one, not peradventure a keener one, possibly one that we could outdo, in the game of chuck-farthing, now the highest test we have. This foreigner made me no bow at all, though I expected a very grand one; he took me quietly by both hands, and said, "I am very glad to know you. Will you do me the favour of coming to my room?" The light of my eyes, and of his as well,--for that could be seen in half a glance,--vanished with a smile; and I followed my host through a narrow stone-passage to an ancient door, studded with nails and iron fleurs-de-lis. That solid henchman was standing on guard, whom I had seen before, and known as Stepan; and inside lay that other mighty dog, of whom I had seen but little as yet, _Orla_, the son of _Kuban_. The room was not large, but much loftier than the rooms of an old dwelling-house would be, and the walls were not papered nor painted, but partly covered with bright hangings, among which mirrored sconces were fixed, with candles burning in some of them. Stepan soon set the rest alight, so that the cheerful and pleasant aspect of the whole surprised me. But against the walls were ranged on shelves, betwixt the coloured hangings, metallic objects of a hundred shapes, tools, castings, appliances, implements unknown to me, and pieces of mechanism, enough to puzzle my brother Harold, or any other great inventor. But although they were not in my line at all, I longed to know what they were meant for. "One of the great and peculiar features of the English nation," my host said, with a friendly smile, and slow but clear pronunciation, "according to my experience is, that they never show much curiosity about things that do not concern them. A Frenchman, a German, an Italian would scarcely have cast his eyes round this room, without eager desire arising in his bosom to know what the use of all these things may be. Even if he were too polite to enquire, he would contrive to fill me with some conclusion of a duty to him--the duty of exposing to him my own affairs. With you it is entirely different. You do not even entertain a wish, you are free from all little desires to learn what could not in any way be your own business."