You can imagine him arriving in the capital on a baggage waggon--in the capital which is like no other city in the world! Before him there lay spread out the whole field of life, like a sort of Arabian Nights--a picture made up of the Nevski Prospect, Gorokhovaia Street, countless tapering spires, and a number of bridges apparently supported on nothing--in fact, a regular second Nineveh.

Well, he made shift to hire a lodging, but found everything so wonderfully furnished with blinds and Persian carpets and so forth that he saw it would mean throwing away a lot of money.

True, as one walks the streets of St.Petersburg one seems to smell money by the thousand roubles, but our friend Kopeikin's bank was limited to a few score coppers and a little silver--not enough to buy a village with! At length, at the price of a rouble a day, he obtained a lodging in the sort of tavern where the daily ration is a bowl of cabbage soup and a crust of bread; and as he felt that he could not manage to live very long on fare of that kind he asked folk what he had better do.

'What you had better do ?' they said.

'Well the Government is not here--it is in Paris, and the troops have not yet returned from the war; but there is a TEMPORARY Commission sitting, and you had better go and see what IT can do for you.' 'All right!' he said.