Buttressed by the companionship of books, this other class lives in splendidly-furnished rooms, with pictures purchased in Paris, statuettes from Rome, and grand pianos drawn for days over the passes by laboring oxen. One converses at the consulate in French, the mother tongue of none, but the common tongue of all. The few favored guests, who are invited of necessity over and over, play chess endlessly in the evenings. The ladies read the latest French novels, or sing the songs that distant friends have sent from the Riviera or St. Petersburg. They drive in imported carriages and sleighs for the afternoon airing, and bemoan Nice and Monte Carlo in winter over the pages of Zola’s “Rome.” The men subscribe extensively to English, French, German, and Russian periodicals. They invite such relatives as can be persuaded for lengthy stays, and shower a guest with the hospitality of old claret, caviar, and the varied courtesies which the rarity of visitors from the world inspires. They take long adventurous horseback trips in the dull season,--explore forgotten monasteries, study the Tibetan inscriptions, print monographs on the folk-tales, and dream of promotion and Petersburg. The consulate has one uniquely circumstanced personality, whose career is a romance of Eastern adventure. Born in the Baltic provinces, he studied in the Oriental training-schools, and entered the Russian diplomatic service at Peking. Here he applied himself indefatigably, until he knew the Chinese language as did hardly another European. He could write the ten thousand ideographs, and could speak flawlessly the Mandarin and the popular dialects. He went to Mongolia and mastered its languages also,--its spoken idioms and its written grapevine letters. Then, with his diplomatic entrée, his knowledge of men and tongues, and the initiative of an adventurer, he launched his grand coup in the palace of Peking. He carried away the sole right to the gold of two _eimucks_, a territory as large as France. Not a Chinaman may pan the metal, not a Slav may open a mine, save through this concessionnaire. A third of all gold washed,--these are his terms to those who would lease from him; just double what he pays the Peking Yamen for his privilege. Fortune upon fortune he is reported to have made, and the Chinese gold-washers and the Russian miners who lease from him have gathered their own stakes, too, despite the Cæsar’s tribute which he exacpts of all that they produce.