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