ere, by the way, there is no one you can order to roast
your pheasant and cook your cabbage-soup, because the three veterans
who have charge of the inn are either so stupid, or so drunk, that it is
impossible to knock any sense at all out of them.

I was informed that I should have to stay there three days longer,
because the "Adventure" had not yet arrived from Ekaterinograd and
consequently could not start on the return journey. What a misadventure!
[18]... But a bad pun is no consolation to a Russian, and, for the sake
of something to occupy my thoughts, I took it into my head to write down
the story about Bela, which I had heard from Maksim Maksimych--never
imagining that it would be the first link in a long chain of novels: you
see how an insignificant event has sometimes dire results!... Perhaps,
however, you do not know what the "Adventure" is? It is a
convoy--composed of half a company of infantry, with a cannon--which
escorts baggage-trains through Kabardia from Vladikavkaz to
Ekaterinograd.

The first day I found the time hang on my hands dreadfully. Early next
morning a vehicle drove into the courtyard... Aha! Maksim Maksimych!...
We met like a couple of old friends. I offered to share my own room with
him, and he accepted my hospitality without standing upon ceremony; he
even clapped me on the shoulder and puckered up his mouth by way of a
smile--a queer fellow, that!...

Maksim Maksimych was profoundly versed in the culinary art. He roasted
the pheasant astonishingly well and basted it successfully with cucumber
sauce. I was obliged to acknowledge that, but for him, I should have had
to remain on a dry-food diet. A bottle of Kakhetian wine helped us to
forget the modest number of dishes--of which there was one, all told.
Then we lit our pipes, took our chairs, and sat down--I by the window,
and he by the stove, in which a fire had been lighted because the day
was damp and cold. We remained silent. What had we to talk about? He had
already told me all that was of interest about himself and I had nothing
to relate. I looked out of the window. Here and there, behind the trees,
I caught glimpses of a number of poor, low houses straggling along the
bank of the Terek, which flowed seaward in an ever-widening stream;
farther off rose the dark-blue, jagged wall of the mountains, behind
which Mount Kazbek gazed forth in his highpriest's hat of white. I took
a mental farewell of them; I felt sorry to leave them...