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52 Saint James, and as formerly he had lived in Moscow; never leaving the house after dark, never setting foot in a lonely place nor where the shadows were blotched and deep, never moving an inch without his armed peasants—big, lumpish, brooding men, savagely silent and intensely loyal, who shook their heads and gave no reply when curious people addressed and questioned them about their master.

So, with the slow, pitiless swing of time and the familiarity which time breeds, Pavel Narodkine became part of the city's contemporary history—he became one more of Paris's unexplained and, in a way, accepted mysteries; like the tall, white-bearded Highland Scot who for years has walked every afternoon from the Porte Saint Martin to the Arc de Triomphe, dressed in kilts and plaid, horn-handled dagger in his stockings, sporran swinging rhythmically to the skirl of an imaginary war-pipe; like the blind American who twice a week, rain or shine, takes his seat on the pavement outside of the Café de Naples and distributes gold-pieces to all passers-by; like the plum-colored, turbaned Senegalese who promptly, every morning at five, prays in front of the statue of Strasbourg, his hands spread out like