manufactures and a great
diversity of soil, and that, in spite of the fact that he was greatly
struck with the amenities of his host's domain, he would certainly
not have presumed to intrude at such an inconvenient hour but for the
circumstance that the inclement spring weather, added to the state of
the roads, had necessitated sundry repairs to his carriage at the hands
of wheelwrights and blacksmiths. Finally he declared that, even if this
last had NOT happened, he would still have felt unable to deny himself
the pleasure of offering to his host that meed of homage which was the
latter's due.

This speech--a speech of fascinating bonhomie--delivered, the guest
executed a sort of shuffle with a half-boot of patent leather studded
with buttons of mother-of-pearl, and followed that up by (in spite of
his pronounced rotundity of figure) stepping backwards with all the elan
of an india-rubber ball.

From this the somewhat reassured Tientietnikov concluded that his
visitor must be a literary, knowledge-seeking professor who was engaged
in roaming the country in search of botanical specimens and fossils;
wherefore he hastened to express both his readiness to further the
visitor's objects (whatever they might be) and his personal willingness
to provide him with the requisite wheelwrights and blacksmiths.
Meanwhile he begged his guest to consider himself at home, and,
after seating him in an armchair, made preparations to listen to the
newcomer's discourse on natural history.

But the newcomer applied himself, rather, to phenomena of the internal
world, saying that his life might be likened to a barque tossed on the
crests of perfidious billows, that in his time he had been fated to play
many parts, and that on more than one occasion his life had stood
in danger at the hands of foes. At the same time, these tidings were
communicated in a manner calculated to show that the speaker was also
a man of PRACTICAL capabilities. In conclusion, the visitor took out a
cambric pocket-handkerchief, and sneezed into it with a vehemence wholly
new to Tientietnikov's experience. In fact, the sneeze rather resembled
the note which, at times, the trombone of an orchestra appears to utter
not so much from its proper place on the platform as from the immediate
neighbourhood of the listener's ear. And as the echoes of the drowsy
mansion resounded to the report of the explosion there followed upon the
same a wave of perfume, skilfully wafted a