It was during this summer bathing that Madame Steynlin had made acquaintance of what was, at the time, the Master's favourite disciple. His name happened to be Peter--Peter Arsenievitch Krasnojabkin. He was a fine son of earth--a strapping young giant who threw himself into eating, drinking, and other joys of life with enviable barbaric zest. There was not an ounce of piety in his composition. He had donned the scarlet blouse because he wanted to see Nepenthe and, like the Christians of old, had no money. Driven by that roving spirit which is the Muscovite's heritage and by the desire of all sensible men to taste new lands, new wine, new women, he professed himself a Little White Cow. It was quite the regular thing to do. It brought you to the notice of that secret committee of enthusiasts who paid your travel expenses; it gave you a free trip to the sunny south. Everyone wondered how he had managed to rise so rapidly in the Master's graces. Madame Steynlin now stepped between them. She grew fond of Peter, and marked him for her own. He fulfilled every one of her conditions as to age, costume and opinions. Besides, he was always so gloriously hungry! She invited him to take luncheon once or twice and then began to take Russian lessons from him. "He is only a boy," she would say. Conversing, as best she could, with this child of nature, it dawned upon her that she had hitherto been mistaken in her estimate of the Russian character. She began to understand the inward sense of that brotherly love, that apostolic spirit, which binds together every class of the immense Empire--to revere their simplicity of soul and calm god-like faith. She revised her former narrow Lutheran views and openly confessed that she was quite wrong in declaring, as she once did, that what the Little White Cows needed was "more soap and less salvation." The magic of love! It softened, not for the first time, her heart towards all humanity and in particular, on this occasion, towards the rest of the saintly band; were they not her brothers and sisters? She even knitted six pairs of warm woollen socks and sent them with a polite message to the Master--a message which was left unanswered, though the socks were never returned. As to Peter--she called him her Little Peter or, in his more expansive moments, Peter the Great. Soon he was always coming to the villa at meal-times and staying for hours afterwards, while they wrestled with the complexities of Russian genders. He made no secret of the pleasure he derived from filling his healthy young stomach at her expense; everything supplementary to that prime condition he took as a gift from the gods. If he had not been so simple-minded he could have wheedled any amount of money out of her. The affair had now been going on for four month--quite a long while, as such affairs went.