he could bear such deeds
as were done before his face.

The next day I went to Bomback by myself, as I was sure of meeting young
Russian officers, who would have annoyed me by making love to Zaira in
their own language. I found the two travellers and the brothers Lunin,
then lieutenants but now generals. The younger of them was as fair and
pretty as any girl. He had been the beloved of the minister Teploff, and,
like a lad of wit, he not only was not ashamed but openly boasted that it
was his custom to secure the good-will of all men by his caresses.

He had imagined the rich citizen of Hamburg to be of the same tastes as
Teploff, and he had not been mistaken; and so he degraded me by forming
the same supposition. With this idea he seated himself next to me at
table, and behaved himself in such a manner during dinner that I began to
believe him to be a girl in man's clothes.

After dinner, as I was sitting at the fire, between him and the
Frenchman, I imparted my suspicions to him; but jealous of the
superiority of his sex, he displayed proof of it on the spot, and
forthwith got hold of me and put himself in a position to make my
happiness and his own as he called it. I confess, to my shame, that he
might perhaps have succeeded, if Madame la Riviere, indignant at this
encroachment of her peculiar province, had not made him desist.

Lunin the elder, Crevecceur, and Bomback, who had been for a walk,
returned at nightfall with two or three friends, and easily consoled the
Frenchman for the poor entertainment the younger Lunin and myself had
given him.

Bomback held a bank at faro, which only came to an end at eleven, when
the money was all gone. We then supped, and the real orgy began, in which
la Riviere bore the brunt in a manner that was simply astonishing. I and
my friend Lunin were merely spectators, and poor Crevecoeur had gone to
bed. We did not separate till day-break.

I got home, and, fortunately for myself, escaped the bottle which Zaira
flung at my head, and which would infallibly have killed me if it had hit
me. She threw herself on to the ground, and began to strike it with her
forehead. I thought she had gone mad, and wondered whether I had better
call for assistance; but she became quiet enough to call me assassin and
traitor, with all the other abusive epithets that she could remember. To
convict me of my crime she shewed me twenty-five cards, placed in order,
and on them she displayed the various en