face of the woman. And
for your damned rouble you want me to go all to pieces before you like
a pancake, and that from your nasty love my eyes should pop out onto my
forehead? Why, hit him in the snout, the skunk, in the snout! Until
there's blood!"

"O, Jennie! Stop it now! PFUI!" the susceptible Emma Edwardovna, made
indignant by her tone, stopped her.

"I won't stop!" she cut her short abruptly. But she grew quiet by
herself and wrathfully walked away with distending nostrils and with
fire in the darkened, handsome eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

Little by little the drawing room was filling. There came Roly-Poly,
long known to all Yama--a tall, thin, red-nosed, gray old man, in the
uniform of a forest ranger, in high boots, with a wooden yard-stick
always sticking out of his side-pocket. He passed whole days and
evenings as a habitue of the billiard parlor in the tavern, always
half-tipsy, shedding his little jokes, jingles and little sayings,
acting familiarly with the porters, with the housekeepers and the
girls. In the houses everybody from the proprietress to the
chamber-maids--treated him with a bit of derision--careless, a trifle
contemptuous, but without malice. At times he was even not without use:
he could transmit notes from the girls to their lovers, and run over to
the market or to the drug-store. Not infrequently, thanks to his
loosely hung tongue and long extinguished self respect, he would worm
himself into a gathering of strangers and increase their expenditures,
nor did he carry elsewhere the money gotten as "loans" on such
occasions, but spent it right here for women--unless, indeed, he left
himself some change for cigarettes. And, out of habit, he was
good-naturedly tolerated.

"And here's Roly-Poly arrived," announced Niura, when he, having
already managed to shake hands amicably with Simeon the porter, stopped
in the doorway of the drawing room, lanky, in a uniform cap knocked at
a brave slant over one side of his head. "Well, now, Roly-Poly, fire
away!"

"I have the honour to present myself," Roly-Poly immediately commenced
to grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military fashion, "a
right honourable privy frequenter of the local agreeable
establishments, Prince Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron
Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski--Mister Beethoven! Mister Chopin!" he
greeted the musicians. "Play me something from the opera The Brave and
Charming General Anisimov, or, A Hubbub in the Coolid