and the lodge stood a huge bull. With his head down to the ground, and a malignant gleam in his eyes, he was snorting heavily and furiously, and with a rapid movement of one fore-leg, he tossed the dust up in the air with his broad cleft hoof, lashed his sides with his tail, and suddenly backing a little, shook his shaggy neck stubbornly, and bellowed--not loud, but plaintively, and at the same time menacingly. I was, I confess, alarmed; but Vassily Fomitch stepped forward with perfect composure, and saying in a stern voice, "Now then, country bumpkin," shook his handkerchief at him. The bull backed again, bowed his horns . . . suddenly rushed to one side and ran away, wagging his head from side to side.

"There's no doubt he took Prague," I thought.

We went into the room. The brigadier pulled his cap off his hair, which was soaked with perspiration, ejaculated, "Fa!" . . . squatted down on the edge of a chair . . . bowed his head gloomily. . . .

"I have come to you, Vassily Fomitch," I began my diplomatic approaches, "because, as you have served under the leadership of the great Suvorov--have taken part altogether in such important events--it would be very interesting for me to hear some particulars of your past."

The brigadier stared at me. . . . His face