As I spoke I took my passport from my pocket, and handed it over with an air of triumph. He unfolded the document and examined it. His turn was to smile now, and he “smole.”
“All wrong, my dear sir,” he said, “there is no _visa_ for departure; nothing but the _visa pour entrer_ and the _visa de séjour_.”
Here was a pretty caldron of piscatorial products. It was one o’clock, and the steamer was to sail at four; it was Saturday afternoon, and the police-bureau closed at twelve o’clock on the last day of the week.
“I will endeavor to get you out of your trouble,” said the kind hearted Smith--I wish all Smiths were like him and the world would then be much better off than it is--“we will jump into a drosky and do some fast driving; and as I know the Governor and the Police-Master I think the matter can be fixed.”
We hired a drosky and told the driver to put in his best licks and he might expect something to get drunk on. This appeal to the noble sentiments of an isvoshchik’s heart roused his ambition and he put in the “licks” aforesaid, with a whip weighing about three pounds in the handle and two in the lash.
We went forward as if impelled by the boot of His Brimstonic Majesty, and as the narrow drosky bounded from side to side the two passengers had hard work to hold on.
We were soon at the Governor’s, and entered a room filled with a crowd of all sorts of people, some dirty, some dirtier, and some dirtiest, and a few looking clean and respectable. The Consul gave his name and rank to a soldier who disappeared { 112}through a narrow doorway and soon returned to escort us into the gubernatorial presence.
The governor was a well-proportioned man of fifty-five or sixty years, with white hair, a clean-shaven face, and regular, pleasing features. He was in civilian dress, and his manners were easy and unaffected like those of the higher class of Russians generally. In his presence one might easily forget the official in the kind and courteous gentleman. If he had an iron hand, it was most skillfully covered with velvet. Napoleon said, “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar.” That may be so, but it is unnecessary to indulge in scratching when the Russian is as amiable as we generally find him. It is like removing the paint from a beautiful picture to get at the rough canvas.