There they remained for three months; and when they were demanded, we
had to undertake a serious search, so completely had their existence and
whereabouts been lost to our lightened spirits. In the mean time we had
grasped the elementary fact that they would be required only on a change
of domicile. By dint of experience we learned various other facts, which
I may as well summarize at once.

The legal price of registration is twenty kopeks (about ten cents), the
value of the stamp. But hotel and lodging-house keepers never set it
down in one's bill at less than double that amount. It often rises to
four or five times the legal charge, according to the elegance of the
rooms which one occupies, and also according to the daring of the
landlord. In one house in Moscow, they even tried to make us pay again
on leaving. We refused, and as we already had possession of the
passports, which, they pretended, required a second registry, they could
do nothing. This abuse of overcharging for passport registration on the
part of landlords seems to have been general. It became so serious that
the Argus-eyed prefect of St. Petersburg, General Gresser (now
deceased), issued an order that no more than the law allowed should be
exacted from lodgers. I presume, however, that all persons who could not
read Russian, or who did not chance to notice this regulation, continued
to contribute to the pockets of landlords, since human nature is very
much alike everywhere, in certain professions. I had no occasion to test
the point personally, as the law was issued just previous to my
departure from the country.

The passport law seems to be interpreted by each man for himself in
other respects, also. In some places, we found that we could stay
overnight quite informally; at others, our passports were required. Once
we spent an entire month incognito. At Kazan, our balcony commanded a