"Yes."
"In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your
Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made," was his answer. "When
I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at
your Excellency's hotel."
And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his
officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.
On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in.
Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts,
an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the
south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and
meager and the houses for the most part built of wood, I saw on every
hand the disastrous result of the attempted Russification of the
country. The hand of the oppressor, that official sent from Petersburg
to crush and to conquer, was upon the honest Finnish nation. The Russian
bureaucracy was trying to destroy its weaker but more successful
neighbor, and in order to do so employed the harshest and most
unscrupulous officials it could import.
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