“Sound the alarm!”

But the alarm was not sounded as the firemen were at the baths at the moment.

They supped at the ‘London’ and, after supper, the Persian departed.  When he saw him off, Stepan Ivanovitch kissed him three times after the Russian fashion, and even grew tearful.  And when the train started, he shouted: 

“Give our greeting to Persia!  Tell her that we love her!”

A year and four months had passed.  There was a bitter frost, thirty-five degrees, and a piercing wind was blowing.  Stepan Ivanovitch was walking along the street with his fur coat thrown open over his chest, and he was annoyed that he met no one to see the Lion and the Sun upon his breast.  He walked about like this till evening with his fur coat open, was chilled to the bone, and at night tossed from side to side and could not get to sleep.

He felt heavy at heart.

There was a burning sensation inside him, and his heart throbbed uneasily; he had a longing now to get a Serbian order.  It was a painful, passionate longing.

A DAUGHTER OF ALBION

A FINE carriage with rubber tyres, a fat coachman, and velvet on the seats, rolled up to the house of a landowner called Gryabov.  Fyodor Andreitch Otsov, the district Marshal of Nobility, jumped out of the carriage.  A drowsy footman met him in the hall.

“Are the family at home?” asked the Marshal.

“No, sir.  The mistress and the children are gone out paying visits, while the master and mademoiselle are catching fish.  Fishing all the morning, sir.”

Otsov stood a little, thought a little, and then went to the river to look for Gryabov.  Going down to the river he found him a mile and a half from the house.  Looking down from the steep bank and catching sight of Gryabov, Otsov gushed with laughter. . . .  Gryabov, a large stout man, with a very big head, was sitting on the sand, angling, with his legs tucked under him like a Turk.  His hat was on the back of his head and his cravat had slipped on one side.  Beside him stood a tall thin Englishwoman, with prominent eyes like a crab’s, and a big bird-like nose more like a hook than a nose.  She was dressed in a white muslin gown through which her scraggy yellow shoulders were very distinctly apparent.  On her gold belt hung a little gold watch.  She too was angling.  The stillness of the grave reigned about them both.  Both were motionless, as the river upon which their floats were swimming.

“A desperate passion, but deadly dull!” laughed Otsov.  “Good-day, Ivan Kuzmitch.”

“Ah . . . is that you ?” asked Gryabov, not taking his eyes off the water.  “Have you come?”

“As you see . . . .  And you are still taken up with your crazy nonsense!  Not given it up yet?”

“The devil’s in it. . . .  I begin in the morning and fish all day . . . .  The fishing is not up to much to-day.  I’ve caught nothing and this dummy hasn’t either.  We sit on and on and not a devil of a fish!  I could scream!”