Historical fiction; Russia -- Social conditions -- 1801-1917 -- Fiction
The wearer of this cloak was a young fellow, also of about twenty-six
or twenty-seven years of age, slightly above the middle height, very
fair, with a thin, pointed and very light coloured beard; his eyes were
large and blue, and had an intent look about them, yet that heavy
expression which some people affirm to be a peculiarity as well as
evidence, of an epileptic subject. His face was decidedly a pleasant
one for all that; refined, but quite colourless, except for the
circumstance that at this moment it was blue with cold. He held a
bundle made up of an old faded silk handkerchief that apparently
contained all his travelling wardrobe, and wore thick shoes and
gaiters, his whole appearance being very un-Russian.
His black-haired neighbour inspected these peculiarities, having
nothing better to do, and at length remarked, with that rude enjoyment
of the discomforts of others which the common classes so often show:
“Cold?”
“Very,” said his neighbour, readily, “and this is a thaw, too. Fancy if
it had been a hard frost! I never thought it would be so cold in the
old country. I’ve grown quite out of the way of it.”
“What, been abroad, I suppose?”
“Yes, straight from Switzerland.”
“Wheugh! my goodness!” The black-haired young fellow whistled, and then
laughed.
The conversation proceeded. The readiness of the fair-haired young man
in the cloak to answer all his opposite neighbour’s questions was
surprising. He seemed to have no suspicion of any impertinence or
inappropriateness in the fact of such questions being put to him.
Replying to them, he made known to the inquirer that he certainly had
been long absent from Russia, more than four years; that he had been
sent abroad for his health; that he had suffered from some strange
nervous malady—a kind of epilepsy, with convulsive spasms. His
interlocutor burst out laughing several times at his answers; and more
than ever, when to the question, “whether he had been cured?” the
patient replied:
“No, they did not cure me.”
“Hey! that’s it! You stumped up your money for nothing, and we believe
in those fellows, here!” remarked the black-haired individual,
sarcastically.
“Gospel truth, sir, Gospel truth!” exclaimed another passenger, a
shabbily dressed man of about forty, who looked like a clerk, and
possessed a red nose and a very blotchy face. “Gospel truth! All they
do is to get hold of our good Russian money free, gratis, and for
nothing.”
“Oh, but you’re quite wrong in my particular instance,” said the Swiss
patient, quietly. “Of course I can’t argue the matter, because I know
only my own case; but my doctor gave me money—and he had very little—to
pay my journey back, besides having kept me at his own expense, while
there, for nearly two years.”
“Why? Was there no one else to pay for you?” asked the black-haired
one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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