It turned out that the Emperor was surrounded by Germans, and--a prisoner! In order to solve the mystery, I had to go back to the preceding numbers of the paper, and learned, at a sitting, all about the successive German victories, the defeat and capitulation of Macmahon's army at Sedan, and the other great events of that momentous time.

The impression produced can scarcely be realised by those who have always imbibed current history in the homeopathic doses administered by the morning and evening daily papers.
By the useful loquacity of my teacher and the possibility of devoting all my time to my linguistic studies, I made such rapid progress in the acquisition of the language that I was able after a few weeks to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague, roundabout way.

In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russians possess in a high degree.

If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining three-fourths from his own intuition.
As my powers of comprehension increased, my long conversations with the priest became more and more instructive.

At first his remarks and stories had for me simply a philological interest, but gradually I perceived that his talk contained a great deal of solid, curious information regarding himself and the class to which he belonged--information of a kind not commonly found in grammatical exercises.