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Updated: May 19, 2025
If I venture to trouble your Excellency, it is simply from a feeling I may say of regret! . . . It was not intentional if you will graciously believe me." The general made a lachrymose face, and waved his hand. "Why, you are simply making fun of me, sir," he said as he closed the door behind him. "Where's the making fun in it?" thought Tchervyakov, "there is nothing of the sort!
"Never mind, never mind." "For goodness sake excuse me, I . . . I did not mean to." "Oh, please, sit down! let me listen!" Tchervyakov was embarrassed, he smiled stupidly and fell to gazing at the stage. He gazed at it but was no longer feeling bliss. He began to be troubled by uneasiness.
Tchervyakov was not in the least confused, he wiped his face with his handkerchief, and like a polite man, looked round to see whether he had disturbed any one by his sneezing. But then he was overcome with confusion. He saw that an old gentleman sitting in front of him in the first row of the stalls was carefully wiping his bald head and his neck with his glove and muttering something to himself.
I did apologise, but he took it somehow queerly . . . he didn't say a word of sense. There wasn't time to talk properly." Next day Tchervyakov put on a new uniform, had his hair cut and went to Brizzhalov's to explain; going into the general's reception room he saw there a number of petitioners and among them the general himself, who was beginning to interview them.
After questioning several petitioners the general raised his eyes and looked at Tchervyakov. "Yesterday at the Arcadia, if you recollect, your Excellency," the latter began, "I sneezed and . . . accidentally spattered . . . Exc. . . ." "What nonsense. . . . It's beyond anything! What can I do for you," said the general addressing the next petitioner.
ONE fine evening, a no less fine government clerk called Ivan Dmitritch Tchervyakov was sitting in the second row of the stalls, gazing through an opera glass at the Cloches de Corneville. He gazed and felt at the acme of bliss. But suddenly. . . . In stories one so often meets with this "But suddenly." The authors are right: life is so full of surprises!
"He won't speak," thought Tchervyakov, turning pale; "that means that he is angry. . . . No, it can't be left like this. . . . I will explain to him." When the general had finished his conversation with the last of the petitioners and was turning towards his inner apartments, Tchervyakov took a step towards him and muttered: "Your Excellency!
"Be off!" yelled the general, turning suddenly purple, and shaking all over. "What?" asked Tchervyakov, in a whisper turning numb with horror. "Be off!" repeated the general, stamping. Something seemed to give way in Tchervyakov's stomach.
"He has forgotten, but there is a fiendish light in his eye," thought Tchervyakov, looking suspiciously at the general. "And he doesn't want to talk. I ought to explain to him . . . that I really didn't intend . . . that it is the law of nature or else he will think I meant to spit on him. He doesn't think so now, but he will think so later!"
In the old gentleman, Tchervyakov recognised Brizzhalov, a civilian general serving in the Department of Transport. "I have spattered him," thought Tchervyakov, "he is not the head of my department, but still it is awkward. I must apologise." Tchervyakov gave a cough, bent his whole person forward, and whispered in the general's ear. "Pardon, your Excellency, I spattered you accidentally. . . ."
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