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It began to get light. Cooks with baskets and elderly ladies in mantles came along one after another, Prokofy, with a chopper in his hand, in a white apron spattered with blood, swore fearful oaths, crossed himself at the church, shouted aloud for the whole market to hear, that he was giving away the meat at cost price and even at a loss to himself.
My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order to announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the young man's shoulder. "All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm. "Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have a look at you, your excellency." "Is everything quite all right?"
It was already dawn, and he saw that Prokofy was carrying away his harrow. "Hey, what's that?" cried the deacon. The neighbours rushed out from their houses. Prokofy was seized, brought to the police station, and then sentenced to eleven months' imprisonment. It was autumn, and Prokofy had to be transferred to the prison hospital.
He was coughing badly; his chest was heaving from the exertion; and he could not get warm. Those who were stronger contrived not to shiver; Prokofy on the contrary shivered day and night, as the superintendent would not light the fires in the hospital till November, to save expense. Prokofy suffered greatly in body, and still more in soul.
Stepan always told every one he met about his last murder, and how it had impressed him. "Far from shrieking, or anything of that kind," he said to Prokofy, "she did not move. 'Kill me! There I am, she said. 'But it is not my soul you destroy, it is your own." "Well, of course, it is very dreadful to kill. I had one day to slaughter a sheep, and even that made me half mad.
But Peter Nikolaevich was convinced that Prokofy had been at the bottom of the whole affair, and began to hate him. One day Proshka bought as usual at the merchant's two measures of oats. One and a half he gave to the horses, and half a measure he gave back to the merchant; the money for it he spent in drink. Peter Nikolaevich found it out, and charged Prokofy with cheating.
Inexorable death has laid his bony hand upon him at the time when, in spite of his bowed age, he was still full of the bloom of strength and radiant hopes. An irremediable loss! Who will fill his place for us? Good government servants we have many, but Prokofy Osipitch was unique.
Hearing that I was awake, Prokofy came into my room with a lamp and sat down at the table. "You ought to have a drink of pepper cordial," he said, after a moment's thought. "If one does have a drink in this vale of tears it does no harm. And if Mamma were to pour a little pepper cordial in her ear it would do her a lot of good."
We walked with a lantern, while his boy Nikolka, aged thirteen, with blue patches on his cheeks from frostbites, a regular young brigand to judge by his expression, drove after us in the sledge, urging on the horse in a husky voice. "I suppose they will punish you at the Governor's," Prokofy said to me on the way.
In the first place they could not make out why the orator called the deceased Prokofy Osipitch when his name was Kirill Ivanovitch.
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