the entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles,
and Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare
among travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue
attention.

It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen
in the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world over,
though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across
a Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots.
German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those
domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into
the world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and
unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the
management of the course--tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces
and white skins--energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in
white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold
lace. Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in
his dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying
high his astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a
gleam of something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of
many races, one of the market-places where men may greet each other who
come from different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are
sons of the empire which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north,
the south, the east, and the west.

"France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my
breath away," said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many
races. On all sides one heard different languages--German, the sing-song
Russian--the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot kill.