reer then,
more seemly, I assure you on my honour! But ever since the year one
thousand and eight hundred" (why precisely from that year he did not
explain), "this warring and this soldiering have come into fashion, my
dear fellow. These military gentlemen have mounted upon their heads some
sort of plumes made of cocks' tails, and made themselves like cocks;
they have drawn their necks up tightly, very tightly ... they speak in
hoarse tones, their eyes are popping out of their heads--and how can
they help being hoarse? The other day some police corporal or other came
to see me.--'I have come to you, Your Well-Born,' quoth he.... (A pretty
way he had chosen to surprise me! ... for I know myself that I am
well-born....) 'I have a matter of business with you.' But I said to him:
'Respected sir, first undo the hooks on thy collar. Otherwise, which God
forbid, thou wilt sneeze! Akh, what will become of thee! What will
become of thee!--Thou wilt burst like a puff-ball.... And I shall be
responsible for it!' And how they drink, those military
gentlemen--o-ho-ho! I generally give orders that they shall be served
with champagne from the Don, because Don champagne and Pontacq are all
the same to them; it slips down their throats so smoothly and so
fast--how are they to distinguish the difference? And here's another
thing: they have begun to suck that sucking-bottle, to smoke tobacco. A
military man will stick that same sucking-bottle under his moustache,
between his lips, and emit smoke through his nostrils, his mouth, and
even his ears--and think himself a hero! There are my horrid
sons-in-law, for example; although one of them is a senator, and the
other is some sort of a curator, they suck at the sucking-bottle
also,--and yet they regard themselves as clever men!..."

Alexyei Sergyeitch could not endure smoking tobacco, nor dogs,
especially small dogs.--"Come, if thou art a Frenchman, then keep a
lap-dog. Thou runnest, thou skippest hither and thither, and it follows
thee, with its tail in the air ... but of what use is it to fellows like
me?"--He was very neat and exacting. He never spoke of the Empress
Katherine otherwise than with enthusiasm, and in a lofty, somewhat
bookish style: "She was a demi-god, not a human being!--Only contemplate
yon smile, my good sir," he was wont to add, pointing at the Lampi
portrait, "and admit that she was a demi-god! I, in my lifetime, have
been so happy as to have been vouchsafed the bliss