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Two electric lights in opaque shades flickered and hissed as though they were angry. The gypsy girls passed the door, softly humming. "One drinks and is none the merrier," said Frolov. "The more I pour into myself, the more sober I become. Other people grow festive with vodka, but I suffer from anger, disgusting thoughts, sleeplessness.
Shortly afterwards there walked into the room a little Tatar boy, aged about twelve, wearing a dress coat and white gloves. "Come here!" Frolov said to him. "Explain to us the following fact: there was a time when you Tatars conquered us and took tribute from us, but now you serve us as waiters and sell dressing-gowns. How do you explain such a change?"
It's something so private that I could only speak of it in my prayers. But if you like . . . as a sign of friendship, between ourselves . . . only mind, to no one, no, no, no, . . . I'll tell you, it will ease my heart, but for God's sake . . . listen and forget it. . . ." Frolov bent down to Almer and for a minute breathed in his ear. "I hate my wife!" he brought out.
It seems as though it is nailed there and it won't come out." A round little old man, buried in fat and completely bald, wearing a short reefer jacket and lilac waistcoat and carrying a guitar, walked into the room. He made an idiotic face, drew himself up, and saluted like a soldier. "Ah, the parasite!" said Frolov, "let me introduce him, he has made his fortune by grunting like a pig.
That's what I'm rich for, to be robbed! . . . You can't get on without parasites! . . . You are my lawyer. You get six thousand a year out of me and what for? But excuse me, . . . I don't know what I am saying." As he was returning home with Almer, Frolov murmured: "Going home is awful to me!
I mean it is awful how many of your sort are toadies hanging about rich men. The number of these peaceful bandits and robbers is beyond all reckoning! Shouldn't we send for the gypsies now? Eh? Fetch the gypsies along!" The gypsies, who had been hanging about wearily in the corridors for a long time, burst with whoops into the room, and a wild orgy began. "Drink!" Frolov shouted to them. "Drink!
The old man sat down, touched the strings with his fat fingers, and began singing: "Neetka, neetka, Margareetka. . . ." After drinking champagne Frolov was drunk. He thumped with his fist on the table and said: "Yes, there's something that sticks in my head! It won't give me a minute's peace!" "Why, what is it?" "I can't tell you. It's a secret.
A MANUFACTURER called Frolov, a handsome dark man with a round beard, and a soft, velvety expression in his eyes, and Almer, his lawyer, an elderly man with a big rough head, were drinking in one of the public rooms of a restaurant on the outskirts of the town. They had both come to the restaurant straight from a ball and so were wearing dress coats and white ties.
Don't you?" A dignified waiter with a shaven upper lip and grey whiskers put a sauceboat on the table. "What's that you are serving?" asked Frolov. "Sauce Provençale for the herring, sir. . . ." "What! is that the way to serve it?" shouted Frolov, not looking into the sauceboat. "Do you call that sauce? You don't know how to wait, you blockhead!" Frolov's velvety eyes flashed.
Seed of Pharaoh! Sing! A-a-ah!" "In the winter time . . . o-o-ho! . . . the sledge was flying . . ." The gypsies sang, whistled, danced. In the frenzy which sometimes takes possession of spoilt and very wealthy men, "broad natures," Frolov began to play the fool.
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