The astonished driver, not daring to make any reply to the all-powerful chief of police, relieved his feelings by flogging his horse, and we were borne in a tornado of dust to the door of the Bourse hotel.
I invited the officers to my room, gave them cigarettes, offered to get them tea, and treated them in every way as if they were guests; but this unexpected courtesy seemed to puzzle rather than placate them. They evidently regarded us as political conspirators about to make an attempt to release somebody from the Perm prison, and when I handed my passport to the young gendarme officer with a polite "Izvóltia" [It is at your service], he looked at me as if I were some new species of dangerous wild animal not classified in the books, and consequently of unknown power for evil. Our passports did not seem, for some reason, to be satisfactory; but the production of the letter of recommendation from the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs brought the comedy of errors to an abrupt termination. The gendarme officer's face flushed a little as he read it, and after a whispered consultation with the chief of police he came to me with some embarrassment and said that he hoped we would pardon what was evidently an "unfortunate misunderstanding"; that they had taken us for two important German criminals (!) of whom they were in search, and that in detaining us they were only doing what they believed to be their duty. He hoped that they had not treated us discourteously, and said that it would gratify them very much if we would shake hands with them as an evidence that we did not harbor any resentment on account of this "lamentable mistake." We shook hands solemnly with them all, and they bowed themselves out. This little adventure, while it interested me as a practical illustration of Russian police methods, made me feel some anxiety with regard to the future. If we were arrested in this way before we had even reached the Siberian frontier, and for merely looking at the outside of a prison, what probably
