"Ill, very ill!" sighed the head.

"I'm not astonished at that," I remarked, in an "aside." "If I were
lying on the stove as you are I should be very ill too."

"Hot, very hot?" I remarked, interrogatively.

"Nitchevo"--that is to say, "not particularly." This remark astonished
me all the more as I noticed that the body to which the head belonged
was enveloped in a sheep-skin!

After living some time in Russia I was no longer surprised by such
incidents, for I soon discovered that the Russian peasant has a
marvellous power of bearing extreme heat as well as extreme cold. When
a coachman takes his master or mistress to the theatre or to a party,
he never thinks of going home and returning at an appointed time. Hour
after hour he sits placidly on the box, and though the cold be of an
intensity such as is never experienced in our temperate climate, he
can sleep as tranquilly as the lazzaroni at midday in Naples. In that
respect the Russian peasant seems to be first-cousin to the polar
bear, but, unlike the animals of the Arctic regions, he is not at all
incommoded by excessive heat. On the contrary, he likes it when he can
get it, and never omits an opportunity of laying in a reserve supply of
caloric. He even delights in rapid transitions from one extreme to
the other, as is amply proved by a curious custom which deserves to be
recorded.

The reader must know that in the life of the Russian peasantry the
weekly vapour-bath plays a most important part. It has even a certain