ou didst turn me out of
doors.... Don't think thou art going to get off with one bottle!"

"Do not worry ... there will be as much as you wish of everything."

Misha flung aside his spade.... "Well, Timosha," he said, addressing his
old man-nurse, "let us honour the host.... Come along!"

"I obey," replied the old man.

And all three wended their way toward the house.

The speculator knew with whom he had to deal. Misha made him promise as
a preliminary, it is true, that he would "allow all privileges" to the
peasants;--but an hour later that same Misha, together with Timofei,
both drunk, danced a gallopade through those rooms where the pious shade
of Andrei Nikolaitch seemed still to be hovering; and an hour later
still, Misha, so sound asleep that he could not be waked (liquor was his
great weakness), was placed in a peasant-cart, together with his kazak
cap and his dagger, and sent off to the town, five-and-twenty versts
distant,--and there was found under a fence.... Well, and Timofei, who
still kept his feet and merely hiccoughed, was "pitched out neck and
crop," as a matter of course. The master had made a failure of his
attempt. So they might as well let the servant pay the penalty!

VI

Again considerable time elapsed and I heard nothing of Misha.... God
knows where he had vanished.--One day, as I was sitting before the
samovar at a posting-station on the T---- highway, waiting for horses,
I suddenly heard, under the open window of the station-room, a hoarse
voice uttering in French:--"_Monsieur ... monsieur ... prenez pitie d'un
pauvre gentilhomme ruine!_".... I raised my head and looked.... The kazak
cap with the fur peeled off, the broken cartridge-pouches on the
tattered Circassian coat, the dagger in a cracked sheath, the bloated
but still rosy face, the dishevelled but still thick hair.... My God!
It was Misha! He had already come to begging alms on the highways!--I
involuntarily uttered an exclamation. He recognised me, shuddered,
turned away, and was about to withdraw from the window. I stopped
him ... but what was there that I could say to him? Certainly I could
not read him a lecture!... In silence I offered him a five-ruble
bank-note. With equal silence he grasped it in his still white and
plump, though trembling and dirty hand, and disappeared round the
corner of the house.

They did not furnish me with horses very promptly, and I had time to
indulge in cheerless meditations on the s