which the promise was made. "But of course, Count, if
anything should prevent the arrival of your friends, you will not consider
this to be an engagement."

"Nothing will prevent the coming of those I expect, nor, if anything
could, would such an accident prevent my fulfilling an engagement which,
since your excellent wife's remarks last night, I do consider binding upon
my honour. And now, Herr Fischelowitz, with my best thanks for your
intervention this morning, I will leave you. After the vicissitudes to
which I have been exposed during the last twelve hours, my appearance is
not what I could wish it to be. I have the pleasure to wish you a very
good morning."

Shaking his companion heartily by the hand, the Count bowed civilly and
turned into an unfrequented street. Fischelowitz looked after him a few
seconds, as though expecting that he would turn back and say something
more, and then walked briskly in the direction of his shop.

He found Akulina standing at the door which led into the workroom, in such
a position as to be able to serve a customer should any chance to enter,
and yet so placed as to see the greater part of her audience. For she was
holding forth volubly in her thick, strong voice, giving her very decided
opinion about the events of the previous evening, the Count, considered in
the first place as a specimen of the human race, and secondly, as in
relation to his acts. Her hearers were poor Vjera, her insignificant
companion and the Cossack who listened, so to say, without enthusiasm,
unless the occasional foolish giggle of the younger girl was to be taken
for the expression of applause.

"I am thoroughly sick of his crazy ways," she was saying, "and if he were
not really such a good workman we should have turned him out long ago. But
he really does make cigarettes very well, and with the new shop about to
be opened, and the demand there is already, it is all we can do to keep
people satisfied. Not but what my husband has been talking lately of
getting a new workman from Vilna, and if he turns out to be all that we
expect, why the Count may go about his business and we shall be left in
peace at last. Indeed it is high time. My poor nerves will not stand many
more such scenes as last night, and as for my poor husband, I believe he
has lost as much money through the Count and his friends as he has paid to
him for work, and if you turn that into figures it makes the cigarettes he
rolls worth six marks