or you.' 'All right!' he said. 'I will go and tell the Commission
that I have shed my blood, and sacrificed my life, for my country.'
And he got up early one morning, and shaved himself with his left hand
(since the expense of a barber was not worth while), and set out, wooden
leg and all, to see the President of the Commission. But first he
asked where the President lived, and was told that his house was in
Naberezhnaia Street. And you may be sure that it was no peasant's hut,
with its glazed windows and great mirrors and statues and lacqueys and
brass door handles! Rather, it was the sort of place which you would
enter only after you had bought a cheap cake of soap and indulged in a
two hours' wash. Also, at the entrance there was posted a grand Swiss
footman with a baton and an embroidered collar--a fellow looking like a
fat, over-fed pug dog. However, friend Kopeikin managed to get himself
and his wooden leg into the reception room, and there squeezed himself
away into a corner, for fear lest he should knock down the gilded china
with his elbow. And he stood waiting in great satisfaction at having
arrived before the President had so much as left his bed and been served
with his silver wash-basin. Nevertheless, it was only when Kopeikin had
been waiting four hours that a breakfast waiter entered to say, 'The
President will soon be here.' By now the room was as full of people as
a plate is of beans, and when the President left the breakfast-room he
brought with him, oh, such dignity and refinement, and such an air
of the metropolis! First he walked up to one person, and then up to
another, saying: 'What do YOU want? And what do YOU want? What can I
do for YOU? What is YOUR business?' And at length he stopped before
Kopeikin, and Kopeikin said to him: 'I have shed my blood, and lost
both an arm and a leg, for my country, and am unable to work. Might I
therefore dare to ask you for a little help, if the regulations should
permit of it, or for a gratuity, or for a pension, or something of the
kind?' Then the President looked at him, and saw that one of his legs
was indeed a wooden one, and that an empty right sleeve was pinned to
his uniform. 'Very well,' he said. 'Come to me again in a few days'
time.' Upon this friend Kopeikin felt delighted. 'NOW I have done my
job!' he thought to himself; and you may imagine how gaily he trotted
along the pavement, and how he dropped into a tavern for a glass of
vodka, and how he order