PREFACE

WHEN you travel in any country, and wish to impart information concerning that country to others, whatever you write about should be written from the national point of view.

Therefore, during my stay in Russia, I made it my business to collect stories contemporaneous, as far as was possible, with our own days, since it was my intention to describe the Russia of the nineteenth century.

Here is a tale borrowed from the year 1812. It is taken from the reminiscences of Bestuchef-Marlinski, a man of considerable talent, who was condemned to death in 1826, but whose sentence was commuted, by special grace of the Emperor Nicholas, to one of banishment to the mines.

Those who have read my Travels in the Caucasus will there find some curious and graphic details connected with that eminent author.