an and a Frenchman, who lead the world
in racing."

"That is why I am going," said Cartoner.

"Then you don't like racing?"

"Yes, I am very fond of it," answered the Englishman, in the same absent
voice, as he led the way towards the door.

In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be found
at the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the drive
up the broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the Mokotow
(where bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the nakedness
of the land), for the simple reason that speech is impossible while
driving through the streets of the worst-paved city in Europe. Which is
a grudge that the traveller may bear against Russia, for if Poland
had been a kingdom she would assuredly have paved the streets of her
capital.

The race-course is not more than fifteen minutes' drive from the heart
of the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At
the entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles,
and Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare
among travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue
attention.

It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen
in the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world over,
though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across
a Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots.
German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those
domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into
the world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and
unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the
management of the course--tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces
and white skins--energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in
white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold
lace. Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in
his dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying
high his astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a
gleam of something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of
many races, one of the market-places where men may greet each other who
come from different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are
sons of the empire which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north,