A SPORTSMAN'S SKETCHES
a merchant came to us from Venev, and his man got talking to me. . . . Yes, that's a good place, no doubt about it; a very good place.'
'Why? Do the merchants pay more wages?'
'Lord preserve us! Why, a merchant would soon give you the sack if you asked him for wages. No, at a merchant's you must live on trust and on fear. He'll give you food, and drink, and clothes, and all. If you give him satisfaction, he'll do more. . . . Talk of wages, indeed! You don't need them. . . . And a merchant, too, lives in plain Russian style, like ourselves; you go with him on a journey—he has tea, and you have it; what he eats, you eat. A merchant . . . one can put up with; a merchant's a very different thing from what a gentleman is; a merchant's not whimsical; if he's out of temper, he'll give you a blow, and there it ends. He doesn't nag nor sneer. . . . But with a gentleman it's a woeful business! Nothing's as he likes it—this is not right, and that he can't fancy. You hand him a glass of water or something to eat: "Ugh, the water stinks! positively stinks!" You take it out, stay a minute outside the door, and bring it back: "Come, now, that's good; this doesn't stink now." And as for the ladies, I tell you, the ladies are something beyond everything! . . . and the young ladies above all! . . .'
'Fedyushka!' came the fat man's voice from the office.
The clerk went out quickly. I drank a glass of
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