It would be better, then, to wait for the steamer, which would enable him to regain lost time.
Here, then, was Michael Strogoff, strolling through the town and quietly looking out for some inn in which to pass the night.

However, he troubled himself little on this score, and, but that hunger pressed him, he would probably have wandered on till morning in the streets of Nijni-Novgorod.

He was looking for supper rather than a bed.

But he found both at the sign of the City of Constantinople.

There, the landlord offered him a fairly comfortable room, with little furniture, it is true, but not without an image of the Virgin, and a few saints framed in yellow gauze.
A goose filled with sour stuffing swimming in thick cream, barley bread, some curds, powdered sugar mixed with cinnamon, and a jug of kwass, the ordinary Russian beer, were placed before him, and sufficed to satisfy his hunger.