Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/97

Rh a great national calamity. Every motion that he made seemed to say to the Buriát monks and acolytes, "This man with the bedbug-bitten face, rumpled shirt, and short-tailed jacket does n't look very imposing, but he 's a high chinóvnik in disguise. You see how I have to behave towards him? It would be as much as my life is worth to put on my hat until he deigns to order it."

The house of the Grand Lama was a plain but rather large one-story log building, the main part of which was divided in halves by a central hall. We were shown into an icy-cold reception-room, furnished with an India-shawl pattern carpet of Siberian manufacture, a low couch covered with blue rep-silk, and a few heavy Russian tables and chairs. On the walls hung roller pictures of various holy temples in Mongolia and Thibet, life-size portraits by native artists of eminent Buddhist lamas and saints, coarse colored lithographs of Alexander II. and Alexander III., and a small card photograph of the Emperor William of Germany.

Khainúief presently came in and seated himself quietly on a chair near the door like a recently corrected schoolboy. There was not a trace nor a suggestion in his demeanor of the half-intoxicated, frisky, self-conceited Tatar prize-fighter who had made the Buriát woman get off her horse to kiss him. His eyes looked heavy and dull and showed the effects of the "insanity drops," but his manner and his self-control were perfect. He did not venture to address a word to us unless he was spoken to, and even then his voice was low and deferential. Once in a while, when none of the brown-gowned acolytes were in the room, his assumed mask of reverential seriousness would suddenly break up into a grin of cunning and drollery, and making a significant gesture with his hand to his mouth he would wink at me, as if to say, "I'm only pretending to be stupid. I wish I had some insanity drops."

All the acolytes and servants in the place spoke, when they spoke at all, in low whispers, as if there were a dead