And whether they hurry or not, it’s all the same. The things lie on the docks in heaps in the rain and the wind. From time to time a train comes along in a leisurely manner, loads up a little pile without hurrying itself, and starts away again in two or three days. If it ever reaches the Carpathians it will be because the track goes downhill. Everywhere it’s the same thing. They say that Russia is great, that she is invincible, that it will take ten years, that the Boches will get to Moscow.... _Nitchevo!_ Napoleon went away again and the Russian-Japanese business wasn’t a defeat. Such, old man, is the country where I find myself at present! Fourgues could hardly hold himself in at first to see the _Pamir_ lying by idle. Now he has found some friends, Russian Naval and Military officers who come on board and with whom he lunches ashore. When I ask him how much longer we are going to stay here, he answers, “_Nitchevo!_” in his Provence accent and the Russians roar with laughter. They drink hard and try to get him to do the same, but Fourgues is determined not to drink more than is good and uses the occasion to beat them at poker. Since they will poison themselves up here, he seizes the opportunity to increase his income, the old fox. Mornings, during the cleaning, he tells me what they said when they were half full. Not a few of them are pro-German, especially among the nobility. It seems that there have been formidable scandals at court and in the Ministries. When I try to pump him, Fourgues answers that he ought not to say anything, but that he is glad he is French, for, although at home we do all sorts of stupid things, at least no one is working for the King of Prussia. As Fourgues never jokes about such matters, I believe he must have been hearing some pretty raw stories--about the railways in particular. Cars are lost in Russia, and even whole trains, without anyone knowing what has become of them. And what will they say in Brest when they know that we lay here more than twenty days with their rifles!