It was five o’clock in the morning when I started on my journey in a hired carriage, accompanied by my faithful Helena. All the way was strewed with corpses of horses and camels. We encountered on our road bands of wandering Asiatic tribes very fierce-looking and armed from head to foot. We reached Kars without any adventure whatever towards night. A crowd of red-fezzed Turks surrounded our carriage as soon as we arrived at the market-place, and stared at us in a rather hostile manner. We tried in vain to make ourselves understood and looked helplessly about us, when I suddenly perceived in the crowd Mr. Danilevski, a Russian officer whom I had known at Alexandropol. I greeted him with a radiant smile, for if he was not the rose, he had been near the rose. My heart was inclined to fail me when I asked for Sergy, and my discouragement was profound when Mr. Danilevski told me that my husband had already started for Erzeroum. Fate treated me with exasperating asperity, and his departure left me inconsolable; I wondered what on earth I should do with myself in Kars; fortunately Sergy had kept his lodging, and Mr. Danilevski proposed to escort us thither. Our carriage stopped before a shabby little house, and we made our way up a dark and tortuous stairs to a room which had a dreary deserted appearance. A rickety table and two lame chairs formed almost all the furniture. The proprietor, an old Turk wearing an enormous white turban on his head, came in and welcomed me graciously, putting his hand to his heart and to his forehead. He offered me a little refreshment, which one of his wives brought in to me on a tray laden with all sorts of sweets; but what I wished for most at that moment was that my host would go away, for I was very weary and exhausted after the journey. When the old Turk had paid me all his oriental civilities and I had got rid of him, I lay down upon a mattress which had been spread on the floor, for there was no bed in the room, but nevertheless I was asleep almost before my head touched the pillow. I woke up the next morning feeling very miserable, very desolate. Here I was alone in a land I knew not, among people whose language I could not speak.