While I stood over him with a verbal club, he entered us in the station-house book as "Mr. Kennan and companion, citizens of Neighboring States";[1] and then going out on the front steps he shouted, as every sleigh-load of drunken men went past, "Andréi! Nikolái! Loshedéi sei chas!" [Horses, this moment!] The only replies that he received were wild howls of derision. At every such outburst of hilarious contempt for authority, he would raise his shaking hands as high as his head with a feeble and comical gesture of helplessness and despair, and exclaim in maudlin tones: "Fsei pyánni! Shto prikázhtie dyálat? Chisto nakazánia!" [They 're all drunk! What are you going to do about it? It 's a regular punishment!]
About nine o'clock the noise, tumult, and shouting in the village streets began to subside; the station-master, whose intoxication had taken the form of severe official dignity, suddenly appeared, and in a tone of stem menace wanted to know where the post-drivers were and what all this disorder meant; the young Russian officer, who by this time had reached the affectionate stage of inebriation, kissed all the women in the room, crossed himself devoutly, and meandered out to the sleigh, followed by his wife with the baby and the saber; two intoxicated priests in long gowns, and high, cylindrical, brimless hats draped with black crape, alighted from a dróshky, in front of the door, allowed their hands to be reverently kissed by the inebriated young officer and his friends, and then rode off in a post-sleigh driven by a peasant who could hardly keep his seat on the box; and finally, when we had almost abandoned the hope of ever getting away, a really sober man in a ragged sheepskin coat emerged from the darkness and reported in a business-like manner to the station-master that the horses were ready for us. The drunken and irate official, who seemed desirous of vindicating his dignity and authority in some way, over-
1 The Russian words for "neighboring" and "united" bear a superficial resemblance to each other, and the poor intoxicated stárosta had never heard, evidently, of such a country as the United States.
- ↑ 1
