Chapter II-1
371 Words
Chapter II
ACCORDING TO THE LEARNED Don Fum’s manuscript, the portals to the World within a World were situated somewhere in Northern Russia, possibly, so he thought, from all indications, somewhere on the westerly slope of the upper Urals. But the great thinker could not locate them with any accuracy. “The people will tell thee” was the mysterious phrase that occurred again and again on the mildewed pages of this wonderful writing.
“The people will tell thee.”
Ah, but what people will be learned enough to tell me that? was the brain-racking question which I asked myself, sleeping and waking, at sunrise, at high noon, and at sunset; at the crowing of the c**k, and in the silent hours of the night.
“The people will tell thee,” said learned Don Fum.
“Ah, but what people will tell me where to find the portals to the World within a World?”
Hitherto on my travels I had made choice of a semi-Oriental garb,* both on account of its picturesqueness and its lightness and warmth, but now as I was about to pass quite across Russia for a number of months, I resolved to don the Russian national costume; for speaking Russian fluently, as I did a score or more of languages living and dead, I would thus be enabled to come and go without everlastingly displaying my passport, or having my trains of thought constantly disturbed by inquisitive travelling companions; a very important thing to me, for my mind possessed the extraordinary power of working out automatically any task assigned to it by me, provided it was not suddenly thrown off its track by some ridiculous interruption.
For instance, I was upon the very point one day of discovering perpetual motion, when the gracious baroness suddenly opened the door and asked me whether I had pared the nails of my great toes lately, as she had observed that I had worn holes in several pairs of my best stockings.
*Orientalism or a fascination with the Orient influenced Victorian fashions. The following image is of a Cossack in the late 18th Century, attired in ‘Oriental garb.’ Such portraits and reports of Cossack and other Russian dress from journeying Englishmen impressed the public with its colorful fabrics and the chic boldness of style.
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