roused to fury, and gets so excited that he actually foams at the
mouth. He speaks with a Polish accent, rapping out each syllable
venomously, till at last the little bags under his eyes swell, and
he abandons the Russian "scoundrels, blackguards, and rascals," and
rolling his eyes, begins pouring out a shower of Polish oaths,
coughing from his efforts. "Lazy dogs, race of curs. May the devil
take them!"

The native hears this abuse distinctly, but, judging from the
appearance of his crumpled little figure, it does not affect him.
Apparently he has long ago grown as used to it as to the buzzing
of the flies, and feels it superfluous to protest. At every visit
Finks has to listen to a tirade on the subject of the lazy
good-for-nothing aborigines, and every time exactly the same one.

"But . . . I must be going," he says, remembering that he has no
time to spare. "Good-bye!"

"Where are you off to?"

"I only looked in on you for a minute. The wall of the cellar has
cracked in the girls' high school, so they asked me to go round at
once to look at it. I must go."

"H'm. . . . I have told Varvara to get the samovar," says Lyashkevsky,
surprised. "Stay a little, we will have some tea; then you shall
go."

Finks obediently puts down his hat on the table and remains to drink
tea. Over their tea Lyashkevsky maintains that the natives are
hopelessly ruined, that there is only one thing to do, to take them
all indiscriminately and send them under strict escort to hard
labour.

"Why, upon my word," he says, getting hot, "you may ask what does
that goose sitting there live upon! He lets me lodgings in his house
for seven roubles a month, and he goes to name-day parties, that's
all that he has to live on, the knave, may the devil take him! He
has neither earnings nor an income. They are not merely sluggards
and wastrels, they are swindlers too, they are continually borrowing
money from the town bank, and what do they do with it? They plunge
into some scheme such as sending bulls to Moscow, or building oil
presses on a new system; but to send bulls to Moscow or to press
oil you want to have a head on your shoulders, and these rascals
have pumpkins on theirs! Of course all their schemes end in smoke
. . . . They waste their money, get into a mess, and then snap their
fingers at the bank. What can you get out of them? Their houses are
mortgaged over and over again, they have no other property--it's
all been drunk and eaten