it. . . . I don't like
Frenchmen as a rule. I am not referring to you, but speaking
generally. . . . They are an immoral people! Outwardly they look
like men, but they live like dogs. Take marriage for instance. With
us, once you are married, you stick to your wife, and there is no
talk about it, but goodness knows how it is with you. The husband
is sitting all day long in a cafe, while his wife fills the house
with Frenchmen, and sets to dancing the can-can with them."

"That's not true!" Champoun protests, flaring up and unable to
restrain himself. "The principle of the family is highly esteemed
in France."

"We know all about that principle! You ought to be ashamed to defend
it: one ought to be impartial: a pig is always a pig. . . . We must
thank the Germans for having beaten them. . . . Yes indeed, God
bless them for it."

"In that case, monsieur, I don't understand. . ." says the Frenchman
leaping up with flashing eyes, "if you hate the French why do you
keep me?"

"What am I to do with you?"

"Let me go, and I will go back to France."

"Wha-at? But do you suppose they would let you into France now?
Why, you are a traitor to your country! At one time Napoleon's your
great man, at another Gambetta. . . . Who the devil can make you
out?"

"Monsieur," says Champoun in French, spluttering and crushing up
his table napkin in his hands, "my worst enemy could not have thought
of a greater insult than the outrage you have just done to my
feelings! All is over!"

And with a tragic wave of his arm the Frenchman flings his dinner
napkin on the table majestically, and walks out of the room with
dignity.

Three hours later the table is laid again, and the servants bring
in the dinner. Kamyshev sits alone at the table. After the preliminary
glass he feels a craving to babble. He wants to chatter, but he has
no listener.

"What is Alphonse Ludovikovitch doing?" he asks the footman.

"He is packing his trunk, sir."

"What a noodle! Lord forgive us!" says Kamyshev, and goes in to the
Frenchman.

Champoun is sitting on the floor in his room, and with trembling
hands is packing in his trunk his linen, scent bottles, prayer-books,
braces, ties. . . . All his correct figure, his trunk, his bedstead
and the table--all have an air of elegance and effeminacy. Great
tears are dropping from his big blue eyes into the trunk.

"Where are you off to?" asks Kamyshev, after standing still for a
little.

The Frenchman sa