Chapter 14 - Page 2

husband's
power is at an end now that he cannot thrash his wife without being
threatened with an appeal to the czar; and that marriage is at an end!"

I do not know if the fair sex is still beaten, but the husbands know
what they may expect if they knock their wives about. Will it be
believed that these peculiar Orientals can see no progress in this
prohibition to beat their wives? Perhaps they remember that the
Terrestrial Paradise is not far off--a beautiful garden between the
Tigris and Euphrates, unless it was between the Amou and the Syr-Daria.
Perhaps they have not forgotten that mother Eve lived in this
preadamite garden, and that if she had been thrashed a little before
her first fault, she would probably not have committed it. But we need
not enlarge on that.

I did not hear, as Madam Ujfalvy-Bourdon did, the band playing the
_Pompiers de Nanterre_ in the governor-general's garden. No! On this
occasion they were playing _Le Pere la Victoire_, and if these are not
national airs they are none the less agreeable to French ears.

We left Tachkend at precisely eleven o'clock in the morning. The
country through which the Grand Transasiatic is now running is not so
monotonous. The plain begins to undulate, for we are approaching the
outer ramifications of the eastern orographic system. We are nearing
the tableland of the Pamirs. At the same time we continue at normal
speed along this section of a hundred and fifty kilometres which
separates us from Khodjend.

As soon as we are on the move I begin to think of Kinko. His little
love romance has touched me to the heart. This sweetheart who sent
himself off--this other sweetheart who is going to pay the expenses--I
am sure Major Noltitz would be interested in these two turtle doves,
one of which is in a cage; he would not be too hard on this defrauder
of the company, he would be incapable of betraying him. Consequently I
have a great desire to tell him of my expedition into the baggage van.
But the secret is not mine. I must do nothing that might get Kinko into
trouble.

And so I am silent, and to-night I will, if possible, take a few
provisions to my packing case--to my snail in his shell, let us say.
And is not the young Roumanian like a snail in his shell, for it is as
much as he can do to get out of it?

We reach Khodjend about three in the afternoon. The country is fertile,
green, carefully cultivated. It is a succession of kitchen gardens,
which seem to be well-kept immense fields sown with clover, which yield
four or five crops a year. The roads near the town are bordered with
long rows of mulberry trees, which diversify the view with eccentric
branches.

Again, this pair of cities, old and new. Both of them