An hour after, Michael Strogoff was sleeping soundly on one
of those Russian beds which always seem so hard to strangers,
and on the morrow, the 17th of July, he awoke at break of day.

He had still five hours to pass in Nijni-Novgorod; it seemed to him
an age. How was he to spend the morning unless in wandering,
as he had done the evening before, through the streets?
By the time he had finished his breakfast, strapped up his bag,
had his podorojna inspected at the police office, he would have
nothing to do but start. But he was not a man to lie in bed after
the sun had risen; so he rose, dressed himself, placed the letter
with the imperial arms on it carefully at the bottom of its usual
pocket within the lining of his coat, over which he fastened
his belt; he then closed his bag and threw it over his shoulder.
This done, he had no wish to return to the City of Constantinople,
and intending to breakfast on the bank of the Volga near the wharf,
he settled his bill and left the inn. By way of precaution,
Michael Strogoff went first to the office of the steam-packet company,
and there made sure that the Caucasus would start at the appointed hour.
As he did so, the thought for the first time struck him that,
since the young Livonian girl was going to Perm, it was very
possible that her intention was also to embark in the Caucasus,
in which case he should accompany her.

The town above with its kremlin, whose circumference measures two versts,
and which resembles that of Moscow, was altogether abandoned.
Even the governor did not reside there. But if the town above was
like a city of the dead, the town below, at all events, was alive.

Michael Strogoff, having crossed the Volga on a bridge of boats,