A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC. 327 



that would have escaped the observation of a foreigner 

 traveling alone through the country. 



Sascha was warm-hearted and impulsive as a child. 

 Full of faults and contradictions, it was yet quite im- 

 possible to entertain harsh feelings toward him. From 

 first to last he never ceased to regard me with suspi- 

 cion whenever anything happened contrary to his pre- 

 conceived ideas. In one of the villages between Count 

 Tolstoi's estate and Orel he lost his passport. Ten 

 hours later, after I had bribed a troublesome uriadnik 

 to let him proceed without it to the next provincial 

 government,-^ tcp/essed in a burst of confidence that 

 he had beloved I destroyed his passport in order to get 

 rid of him. All day he had nursed this suspicion, 

 quite unsuspected by the victim of it at his side, who, 

 at the end of that time, unwittingly cleared himself 

 through bribing a policeman. 



In this odd manner was discovered the traces of 

 "color' that led up to the discovery of a veritable 

 mine of the precious commodity that forms the subject 

 of this chapter. 



Like my horse, Texas, who had such a deep-rooted 

 repugnance to wetting his feet that it required as much 

 persuasion to get him into the last stream of the Crimea 

 as the first one from Moscow, so Sascha persisted in 

 the display of this Russian peculiarity to the end of our 

 comradeship. Between the affair of the passport and my 

 parting company with him at Kanseropol, there were per- 

 haps a dozen trifling instances of ordinary and extraordi- 

 nary affairs on the road,where I came under his suspicion. 

 On no single occasion was there the faintest shadow 

 of reason in it. This he was always quick to see and 



