“You bankers have hopes,” observes the brother, “but what of us poor officials of the Justice Department! We are chained to the bench like old galley-slaves, and all we get is three hundred roubles a month and a red button when we are seventy.” As the macerated song floats anew from the piano, the hall-door opens and there is dimly visible in the anteroom a curious much-encumbered figure, with a gigantic sheepskin hat and short blue reefer coat. He divests himself of these, and of a long woolen inside muffler, and, brushing back his long hair, comes into the room. His blue tunic is resplendent with brass buttons and he wears jack-boots. A light down is growing upon his upper lip. He is nineteen or twenty. “Good-day!” says our host, hailing him in English. “Good-day, uncle!” he replies. He presents himself before Madame Karetnikov, who holds out her hand, which he formally kisses. “_Zdravstvouitie_, Valerian!” says the official, shaking the young man’s hand. Then you are introduced with explanations. “Valerian here is in his last year at the Irkutsk Realistic School, studying preparatory to engineering.” The status of science in Siberia becomes the theme, and the newcomer infuses considerable local color into his pictures. “Does the professor in drawing suit you now, Valerian?” the banker inquires presently. Then he adds to you: “They all went on strike because the old professor of drawing had a method they did not like. The authorities had to replace him before any of the students would go back.” “The new professor respects our rights,” says Valerian soberly, not liking the levity of his elder. Soon, from an adjoining room, come in the children of the host,--a very pretty girl of the age at which misses wear short dresses and braids; and a little boy of about eight. The boy very respectfully kisses his mother’s hand and is introduced to the stranger, but finds a superior attraction in his father at the piano. The girl, Marie Pavlovna, sits down beside her cousin Valerian. Lacking the stock football amenities of a happier land, and half-embarrassed, half-superior in the status of a budding young man, Valerian is not much of a conversation-maker. Marie Pavlovna, too, is seen but not heard. She is evidently the typical product of the French system of sex-segregation and cloistered study, which keeps girls abnormally uninteresting until marriage, perhaps to make amends subsequently. “I think we had better go in and eat. It is half-past eight,” says the host. “Si tu veux,” replies his wife; and we stroll out into a big dining-room, at one end of which is a heavily-freighted oak sideboard. As we approach this, the host opens a far door, and shouts down into the darkness:-- “Obeid, Dimitri.” We turn to the _zakuska_ sideboard. The official reaches for the vodka-bottle, and the little silver egg-like glasses. “Vodka will it be, or do you prefer cognac?”