"a dozen glasses,
then . . . and some Benedictine, perhaps . . . and tell them to
warm two bottles of red wine. . . . Oh, and what for the ladies?
Well, you tell them to bring cakes, nuts . . . sweets of some sort,
perhaps. . . . There, run along, look sharp!"

The mayor was silent for a minute and then began again abusing the
frost, banging his arms across his chest and thumping with his
golosh boots.

"No, Yegor Ivanitch," said the governor persuasively, "don't be
unfair, the Russian frost has its charms. I was reading lately that
many of the good qualities of the Russian people are due to the
vast expanse of their land and to the climate, the cruel struggle
for existence . . . that's perfectly true!"

"It may be true, your Excellency, but it would be better without
it. The frost did drive out the French, of course, and one can
freeze all sorts of dishes, and the children can go skating--
that's all true! For the man who is well fed and well clothed the
frost is only a pleasure, but for the working man, the beggar, the
pilgrim, the crazy wanderer, it's the greatest evil and misfortune.
It's misery, your Holiness! In a frost like this poverty is twice
as hard, and the thief is more cunning and evildoers more violent.
There's no gainsaying it! I am turned seventy, I've a fur coat now,
and at home I have a stove and rums and punches of all sorts. The
frost means nothing to me now; I take no notice of it, I don't care
to know of it, but how it used to be in old days, Holy Mother! It's
dreadful to recall it! My memory is failing me with years and I
have forgotten everything; my enemies, and my sins and troubles of
all sorts--I forget them all, but the frost--ough! How I remember
it! When my mother died I was left a little devil--this high--
a homeless orphan . . . no kith nor kin, wretched, ragged, little
clothes, hungry, nowhere to sleep--in fact, 'we have here no
abiding city, but seek the one to come.' In those days I used to
lead an old blind woman about the town for five kopecks a day . . .
the frosts were cruel, wicked. One would go out with the old woman
and begin suffering torments. My Creator! First of all you would
be shivering as in a fever, shrugging and dancing about. Then your
ears, your fingers, your feet, would begin aching. They would ache
as though someone were squeezing them with pincers. But all that
would have been nothing, a trivial matter, of no great consequence.
The trouble was when your whol