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relish for that sort of joke.

"Well, if you tear your hair, or if you throw ashes on your head,"
replied the traveler, "will that change the course of events?
No; no more than the course of the Exchange."

"One can easily see that you are not a merchant," observed the little Jew.

"Faith, no, worthy son of Abraham! I sell neither hops,
nor eider-down, nor honey, nor wax, nor hemp-seed, nor salt meat,
nor caviare, nor wood, nor wool, nor ribbons, nor, hemp, nor flax,
nor morocco, nor furs."

"But do you buy them?" asked the Persian, interrupting
the traveler's list.

"As little as I can, and only for my own private use,"
answered the other, with a wink.

"He's a wag," said the Jew to the Persian.

"Or a spy," replied the other, lowering his voice.
"We had better take care, and not speak more than necessary.
The police are not over-particular in these times, and you
never can know with whom you are traveling."

In another corner of the compartment they were speaking
less of mercantile affairs, and more of the Tartar invasion
and its annoying consequences.

"All the horses in Siberia will be requisitioned," said a traveler,
"and communication between the different provinces of Central Asia
will become very difficult."

"Is it true," asked his neighbor, "that the Kirghiz of the middle
horde have joined the Tartars?"

"So it is said," answered the traveler, lowering his voice;
"but who can flatter themselves that they know anything really
of what is going on in this country?"

"I have heard speak of a concentration of troops on the frontier.
The Don Cossacks have already gathered along the course of the Volga,
and they are to be opposed to the rebel Kirghiz."

"If the Kirghiz descend the Irtish, the route to Irkutsk will not
be safe," observed his neighbor. "Besides, yesterday I wanted
to send a telegram to Krasnoiarsk, and it could not be forwarded.
It's to be feared that before long the Tartar columns will have
isolated Eastern Siberia."

"In short, little father," continued the first speaker, "these merchants
have good reason for being uneasy about their trade and transactions.
After requisitioning the horses, they will take the boats, carriages,
every means of transport, until presently no one will be allowed to take
even one step in all the empire."

"I'm much afraid that the Nijni-Novgorod fair won't end as brilliantly
as it has begun," responded the other, shaking his head.
"But the safety and integrity of the Russian territory before everything.
Business is business."

If in this compartment the subject of conversation varied but little--
nor did it, indeed, in the other carriages of the train--in all it
might have been observed that the talkers used much circumspection.
When they did happen to venture out of the region of facts,
they never went so far as to attempt to divine the intentions
of the Muscovite government, or even to criticize them.

This was especially remarked by a traveler in a carriage at

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