He was quite startled, even incredulous, when Imbs informed him that the Carpathian Mountains belonged to Russia.

“I have an estate in the Don region, you know,” the count said. “Some twenty thousand acres of land, a superb estate! As for coal, it has . . . eine zahllose . . . eine ozeanische Menge! Millions of tons are buried there, just going to waste! It’s always been my dream to do something about this. I’ve been waiting to come across the right man to help me—but we have no specialists in Russia! Not one!”

They began to talk about specialists. They talked and talked. Suddenly the count jumped up as if stung by a bee, clapping his hand to his forehead. “What a stroke of luck that we ran into each other!” he shouted. “What would you say if I asked you to come to my estate? Why stay here in Germany? Germany is teeming with learned Germans, while if you come to my estate you’ll be able to do some good, some real good! How about it? Say you will!”

Imbs paced the cabin with a grave expression, weighing the offer. He agreed to come to Russia. The count clasped his hand, shook it enthusiastically, and called for champagne.

“Finally, after all these years, my mind is at peace!” the count told him. “Now I will have coal!”

A week later Imbs set out for Russia laden with books, charts, hopes, and impure thoughts of Russian rubles. In Moscow the count gave him two hundred rubles and the address of his estate, and told him to head south. “Why not go there now on your own and start work. I might perhaps come down in the autumn. Write and let me know how things are going.”

Imbs arrived at Tulupov’s estate, settled down in one of the mansion’s wings, and the following day set about preparing to supply the whole of Russia with coal.

Three weeks later he sent the count a letter.

“I have familiarized myself with the coal on your land,” he wrote, after a timid and protracted beginning, “and have come to the conclusion that due to its low quality it is not worth digging up. And even if it were three grades higher in quality, it would still not be worth touching. Not to mention that there appears to be a complete lack of demand for coal. Your neighbor, the coal magnate Alpatov, has fifteen million poods of coal ready for shipment, but cannot find a single buyer willing to give him even a brass kopeck for a pood. Not one sack of coal has ever traveled over the Donetsk coal line that passes through your estate, even though the tracks were specifically laid for that purpose. I would be dishonest or reckless if I gave you the slightest hope of success. I would also respectfully venture to add that your estate is in such total disrepair that thinking of coal prospecting or any other enterprise could be considered quite futile.”

At the end of his letter the German asked the count if he could recommend him to another Russian nobleman—“Fürsten oder Grafen”—or send him “ein wenig” money for his return to Germany.

While Imbs waited for a reply, he busied himself with fishing for carp and trapping quail by whistling on a little pipe.

When the reply arrived, it was addressed not to Imbs but to Dzerzhinski, the Polish steward of the estate.

“And tell that German he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing!” the count added in a postscript. “I showed his letter to an engineer (Privy Councilor Mleyev) and he split his sides laughing! You can tell the German that I’m not holding him back! He’s free to go whenever he wants! I gave him two hundred rubles—if he spent fifty rubles to get there, he still has a hundred and fifty left!”

When the Pole informed Imbs of the count’s letter, Imbs panicked. He sat down and filled two sheets with overwrought Germanic handwriting. He begged the count to magnanimously forgive him for having refrained from touching on “a few important details” in his first letter. With tears in his eyes and tormented by pangs of conscience, he wrote that in a card game with Dzerzhinski he had imprudently lost the 172 rubles that had remained after his trip from Moscow.