A SPORTSMAN'S SKETCHES
''Umble respecks and duty'; then he began to adopt a more complicated expression: 'No, that's too, too k'essk'say,' and with the same brilliant success; two years later he had invented a fresh saying: 'Ne voo excite vooself pa, man of sin, sewn in a sheepskin,' and so on. And strange to say! these, as you see, not overwhelmingly witty phrases, keep him in food and drink and clothes. (He has run through his property ages ago, and lives solely upon his friends.) There is, observe, absolutely no other attraction about him; he can, it is true, smoke a hundred pipes of Zhukov tobacco in a day, and when he plays billiards, throws his right leg higher than his head, and while taking aim shakes his cue affectedly; but, after all, not everyone has a fancy for these accomplishments. He can drink, too . . . but in Russia it is hard to gain distinction as a drinker. In short, his success is a complete riddle to me. . . . There is one thing, perhaps; he is discreet; he has no taste for washing dirty linen away from home, never speaks a word against anyone.
'Well,' I thought, on seeing Hlopakov, 'I wonder what his catchword is now?'
The prince hit the white.
'Thirty love,' whined a consumptive marker, with a dark face and blue rings under his eyes.
The prince sent the yellow with a crash into the farthest pocket.
'Ah!' a stoutish merchant, sitting in the corner at a tottering little one-legged table, boomed
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