“I used to smoke, but it is so common now,” she explains. “Every peasant’s wife hangs over her oven with a cigarette in her mouth. Even a vice cannot survive after it has become unfashionable.” The host comes up to show you his curios. “This Alpine scene is one of Segantini’s. We got it in Dresden before he had earned his repute. I am very proud of my wife’s discrimination. The statuettes are from a little sculptor in the Via Sistina in Rome. Rien d’extraordinaire. The vase came from the Imperial Palace in Peking. I bought it from a Cossack for fifty kopecks. I have been told it belongs to the Tsin Dynasty, and is better than those they have in Petersburg Hermitage.” So you are shown the spoil of two continents in connoisseur purchases. “Hardly to be suspected in Irkutsk,” he allows, complacently. Every year host and hostess visit the Riviera, taking a turn at Monte Carlo and Nice and Cannes. The banker speaks English, French, German, and Italian fluently, and half a dozen other languages passably. His wife acknowledges only French and Italian. The conversation turns to the idealism of Pierre Loti’s description of the road to Ispahan. The banker has followed this road himself, and he has a much less poetic memory of it. The veteran--his father--is not up in French or English, but he has a good knowledge of German left from academy times. In this language he tells of the old days of the serfs and of the Crimea. He talks with the kind frankness of age that does not need self-suppression to prompt respect. When the guests rise to leave, and the buoyancy of the entertainment is passed, his cloud comes back. His voice has just a touch of bitterness as he says good-bye. “I am glad we can welcome to our country a man traveling for pleasure. So many who come are here under less pleasant auspices.” “_De svidania_,” you say at last to everybody, and out you go into the midnight frost. The droshky-driver is still there waiting. He has slept since you entered, unmoving through the hours. “_Gastinitza_,” you direct; and he drives to the hotel through the bleak starlit night. Valerian comes a few days later to visit us, and volunteers to be our guide for Irkutsk. “If I miss a few days at the Academy, what matter? I shall improve my English,” he explains.