“Good heavens,” cried his chief in alarm.  “Lizaveta Pavlovna, what is wrong with her?”

Vassily Stepanovitch merely throws up his hands and raises his eyes to the ceiling, as though he would say:  “It’s the will of Providence.”

“Ah, my boy, I can sympathise with you with all my heart!” sighs his chief, rolling his eyes.  “I’ve lost my wife, my dear, I understand.  That is a loss, it is a loss!  It’s awful, awful!  I hope Lizaveta Pavlovna is better now!  What doctor is attending her ?”

“Von Schterk.”

“Von Schterk!  But you would have been better to have called in Magnus or Semandritsky.  But how very pale your face is.  You are ill yourself!  This is awful!”

“Yes, your Excellency, I haven’t slept.  What I have suffered, what I have been through!”

“And yet you came!  Why you came I can’t understand?  One can’t force oneself like that!  One mustn’t do oneself harm like that.  Go home and stay there till you are well again!  Go home, I command you!  Zeal is a very fine thing in a young official, but you mustn’t forget as the Romans used to say:  ‘mens sana in corpore sano,’ that is, a healthy brain in a healthy body.”

Vassya agrees, puts his papers back in his portfolio, and, taking leave of his chief, goes home to bed.

THE LION AND THE SUN

IN one of the towns lying on this side of the Urals a rumour was afloat that a Persian magnate, called Rahat-Helam, was staying for a few days in the town and putting up at the “Japan Hotel.”  This rumour made no impression whatever upon the inhabitants; a Persian had arrived, well, so be it.  Only Stepan Ivanovitch Kutsyn, the mayor of the town, hearing of the arrival of the oriental gentleman from the secretary of the Town Hall, grew thoughtful and inquired: 

“Where is he going?”

“To Paris or to London, I believe.”

“H’m. . . .  Then he is a big-wig, I suppose?”

“The devil only knows.”

As he went home from the Town Hall and had his dinner, the mayor sank into thought again, and this time he went on thinking till the evening.  The arrival of the distinguished Persian greatly intrigued him.  It seemed to him that fate itself had sent him this Rahat-Helam, and that a favourable opportunity had come at last for realising his passionate, secretly cherished dream.  Kutsyn had already two medals, and the Stanislav of the third degree, the badge of the Red Cross, and the badge of the Society of Saving from Drowning, and in addition to these he had made himself a little gold gun crossed by a guitar, and this ornament, hung from a buttonhole in his uniform, looked in the distance like something special, and delightfully resembled a badge of distinction.  It is well known that the more orders and medals you have the more you want—­and the mayor had long been desirous of receiving the Persian order of The Lion and the Sun; he desired it passionately, madly.  He knew very well that there was no need to fight, or to subscribe to an asylum, or to serve on committees to obtain this order; all that was needed was a favourable opportunity.  And now it seemed to him that this opportunity had come.