animated and embraced most subjects under heaven, from
big-game shooting in Africa to the last poem published in a very
modernist review, edited by the very young and patronised by the highest
society. But it never touched upon "Almayer's Folly," and next morning,
in uninterrupted obscurity, this inseparable companion went on rolling
with me in the south-east direction towards the Government of Kiev.

At that time there was an eight-hours' drive, if not more, from the
railway station to the country house which was my destination.

"Dear boy" (these words were always written in English), so ran the last
letter from that house received in London,--"Get yourself driven to the
only inn in the place, dine as well as you can, and some time in the
evening my own confidential servant, factotum and major-domo, a Mr. V.S.
(I warn you he is of noble extraction), will present himself before you,
reporting the arrival of the small sledge which will take you here on
the next day. I send with him my heaviest fur, which I suppose with such
overcoats as you may have with you will keep you from freezing on the
road."

Sure enough, as I was dining, served by a Hebrew waiter, in an enormous
barn-like bedroom with a freshly painted floor, the door opened and, in
a travelling costume of long boots, big sheep-skin cap and a short coat
girt with a leather belt, the Mr. V.S. (of noble extraction), a man of
about thirty-five, appeared with an air of perplexity on his open and
moustachioed countenance. I got up from the table and greeted him in
Polish, with, I hope, the right shade of consideration demanded by his
noble blood and his confidential position. His face cleared up in a
wonderful way. It appeared that, notwithstanding my uncle's earnest
assurances, the good fellow had remained in doubt of our understanding
each other. He imagined I would talk to him in some foreign language. I
was told that his last words on getting into the sledge to come to meet
me shaped an anxious exclamation:

"Well! Well! Here I am going, but God only knows how I am to make myself
understood to our master's nephew."

We understood each other very well from the first. He took charge of
me as if I were not quite of age. I had a delightful boyish feeling
of coming home from school when he muffled me up next morning in an
enormous bear-skin travelling-coat and took his seat protectively by
my side. The sledge was a very small one and it looked utterly
insignifi