Your honour! I thank you humbly! Forgive us — fools, anathemas; don't condemn us, poor muzhiks! You ought to kick us out of the hall! Yet you come out to meet us, and wet your legs in the snow!’
“And Pavl Ivanuitch will look as if he wanted to hit me, and say, ‘Don't throw yourself at my feet, fool ! You'd do better to drink less vodka and have pity on your wife. You ought to be flogged!’ ‘That's God's truth, Pavl Ivanuitch, may I be flogged; may God flog me! But why not throw myself at your feet? You are our benefactor, our own father! Your honour! It is the truth, before God; spit in my face if I lie: as soon as my Matrena, this same Matrena, gets well, I will make anything your honour wants. A cigar-case, if you wish it, of yellow birch . . . a set of croquet balls, nine-pins — I can make them like the best foreign ones. . . . I will make them all for you. I won't charge a kopeck. In Moscow such cigar-cases cost four roubles. I won't take a kopeck.’ And the doctor will laugh and say to me, ‘Well, well . . . agreed! I'm sorry for you. Only it's a pity you're such a drunkard!’ I know how to manage with these gentlemen ! There's no man on earth I can't stand up to. Only may God keep us from losing the road! Akh, my eyes are full of snow.”
And the turner muttered without cease. As if to dull the pain of his own feelings, he babbled on mechanically. But many as the woi'ds on his lips, there
