Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

THE PLAGUE OF PERSIC AS.181

crowded into the next room, and the door was fastened upon them by the species of lock I have already mentioned. A score of tables filled up the chamber ` but a swarm of priests in their robes, in other words, a troop of waiters in white shirts, precipitated themselves upon the furniture, and left me with bare walls in a few moments. But what a sight then met my eyes ! Under each table, under every stool, multitudes of vermin were crawling, of a kind I have never before seen: they were black insects, about half an inch long, thick, soft, viscid, and tolerably nimble in their movements. This loathsome animal is known in a portion of Eastern Europe, in Yolhynia, the Ukraine, Russia, and a part of Poland, where it is called, I believe, persica, because it was brought from Asia. I cannot make out the name given to it by the coffeehouse waiters of Nijni. On seeing the floor of my chamber mottled over with these moving reptiles, crushed under the foot at every step, not by hundreds, but by thousands, and on perceiving the new kind of ill-savour exhaled by this massacre, I watJ seized with despair, fled from my chamber to the street, and proceeded to present myself to the governor. I did not re-enter my detestable lodging until assured that it had been rendered as clean as practicable. My bed, filled with fresh hay, was placed in the middle of the room, its four feet standing in earthern vessels full of water. Notwithstanding these precautions, I did not fail to find, on awaking from a restless, unrefreshing sleep, two or three persicas on my pillow. The reptiles are not noxious; but I cannot express the disgust with which they inspire me. The filthiness, the apathy, which