B596 <=> B598 (BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 597)

“Once, on the second or third day apparently, after my arrival there, on going to him in the morning, my eye was struck by an unusual movement in the streets: everywhere there were being cleaned, swept, and hung out what are called ‘carpets,’ ‘shawls,’ ‘flags,’ and so on.

“I thought: ‘Evidently one of the two celebrated annual festivals of the beings of this community is beginning.’

“On ascending to the roof, and having exchanged the usual greetings with our dear, most eminent and wise Mullah Nassr Eddin, I asked, pointing with my hand to what was happening in the street, what it was all about.

“Over his face spread his customary benevolent and as always enchanting grimace, which nevertheless had a slight shade of contempt, and he intended to say something, but at that moment there resounded in the street below the shouts of the ‘town criers’ and the clattering of many horses.

“Then our wise Mullah, without uttering a word, got up heavily and having taken me by the sleeve led me to the edge of the roof and then winking cunningly at me with his left eye, he turned my attention to a big ‘cavalcade’ which was rapidly galloping past and which consisted, as I later found out, chiefly of beings who are called ‘cossacks’ belonging to that same large community there, Russia.

“In the center of this large ‘cavalcade’ there rolled by what is called a ‘Russian phaeton,’ harnessed with four horses driven by an unusually fat and ‘imposing looking’ coachman. This imposing exterior, also quite Russian in manner, was due to the pads put in corresponding parts under his clothes. In this phaeton sat two beings, one of the type of that country Persia, and the other, a typical what is called ‘Russian general.’