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With us, once you are married, you stick to your wife, and there is no talk about it, but goodness knows how it is with you. The husband is sitting all day long in a café, while his wife fills the house with Frenchmen, and sets to dancing the can-can with them." "That's not true!" Champoun protests, flaring up and unable to restrain himself.
Monsieur Champoun, a clean, neat, smoothly-shaven, old Frenchman, is sharing the meal with him. This Champoun had once been a tutor in Kamyshev's household, had taught his children good manners, the correct pronunciation of French, and dancing: afterwards when Kamyshev's children had grown up and become lieutenants, Champoun had become something like a bonne of the male sex.
I remember I have read somewhere that all of you have intelligence acquired from books, while we Russians have innate intelligence. If a Russian studies the sciences properly, none of your French professors is a match for him." "Perhaps," says Champoun, as it were reluctantly. "No, not perhaps, but certainly! It's no use your frowning, it's the truth I am speaking.
"Damnation!" he says, wiping away the tears that have come into his eyes after a mouthful of ham thickly smeared with mustard. "Ough! It has shot into my head and all my joints. Your French mustard would not do that, you know, if you ate the whole potful." "Some like the French, some prefer the Russian. . ." Champoun assents mildly. "No one likes French mustard except Frenchmen.
I call him one thing and another, a Jew, and a scurvy rascal, and I make a pig's ear out of my coat tail, and catch him by his Jewish curls. He doesn't take offence." "But he is a slave! For a kopeck he is ready to put up with any insult!" "Come, come, come . . . that's enough! Peace and concord!" Champoun powders his tear-stained face and goes with Kamyshev to the dining-room.
"What motive have I for joking? Why should I? Only mind now; it's a compact, don't you begin whining then and writing letters. I won't stir a finger when they lead you by in fetters!" Champoun jumps up and, pale and wide-eyed, begins pacing up and down the room. "What are you doing to me?" he says in despair, clutching at his head.
At one time Napoleon's your great man, at another Gambetta. . . . Who the devil can make you out?" "Monsieur," says Champoun in French, spluttering and crushing up his table napkin in his hands, "my worst enemy could not have thought of a greater insult than the outrage you have just done to my feelings! All is over!"
Champoun is sitting on the floor in his room, and with trembling hands is packing in his trunk his linen, scent bottles, prayer-books, braces, ties. . . . All his correct figure, his trunk, his bedstead and the table all have an air of elegance and effeminacy. Great tears are dropping from his big blue eyes into the trunk. "Where are you off to?" asks Kamyshev, after standing still for a little.
"My God! accursed be that hour when the fatal thought of leaving my country entered my head! . . ." "Come, come, come . . . I was joking!" says Kamyshev in a lower tone. "Queer fish he is; he doesn't understand a joke. One can't say a word!" "My dear friend!" shrieks Champoun, reassured by Kamyshev's tone.
Before you have gone three or four miles they pounce upon you." Champoun raises his head and looks mistrustfully at Kamyshev. "Yes. . . . You will see! They will see from your face you haven't a passport, and ask at once: Who is that? Alphonse Champoun. We know that Alphonse Champoun. Wouldn't you like to go under police escort somewhere nearer home!" "Are you joking?"
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