But the babel ceased, and they did make room for us--places of honor
against the far wall, because of our clean clothes and nationality.
We sat wedged between a Georgian in smelly, greasy woolen jacket,
and a man who looked Persian but talked for the most part French.
There were other Persians beyond him, for I caught the word poul--money,
the perennial song and shibboleth of that folk.

The day was fine enough, but consensus of opinion had it that snow
was likely falling in the Taurus Mountains, and rain would fall the
next day between the mountains and the sea, making roads and fords
impassable and the mountain passes risky. So men from the ends of
earth sat still contentedly, to pass earth's gossip to and fro--an
astonishing lot of it. There was none of it quite true, and some
of it not nearly true, but all of it was based on fact of some sort.

Men who know the khans well are agreed that with experience one learns
to guess the truth from listening to the ever-changing lies. We
could not hope to pick out truth, but sat as if in the pit of an
old-time theater, watching a foreign-language play and understanding
some, but missing most of it.

There was a man who drew my attention at once, who looked and was
dressed rather like a Russian--a man with a high-bridged, prominent,
lean nose--not nearly so bulky as his sheepskin coat suggested, but
active and strong, with a fiery restless eye. He talked Russian
at intervals with the men who sat near him at the end of the room
on our right, but used at least six other languages with any one
who cared to agree or disagree with him. His rather agreeable voice
had the trick of carrying words distinctly across the din of countless