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80 surprise, but at the same time with approval, asked:

"But why do you love them?"

"I cannot say, your Excellency," replied Semyon Vasilyevich, whose courage had evaporated.

"What do you mean by 'I can't say'? Who, then, can say? But don't be embarrassed, my dear sir. I like my subordinates to show self-reliance and initiative in general, provided, of course, they do not exceed certain legal bounds. Tell me candidly, as though you were talking to your father, why do you love negresses?"

"There is in them, your Excellency, something exotic." That same evening at the general's whist table at the English Club, his Excellency, when he had dealt the cards with his puffy white hands, remarked with assumed carelessness:

"There's in my office an official who is terribly enamoured of negresses. An ordinary clerk, if you please."

The other three generals were jealous: each of them had at his office many officials, but they were the most ordinary, colourless, un-original people imaginable, of whom nothing could be said.

The choleric Anaton Petrovich considered long, scored only one out of a certain four, and after the next deal said:

"I too—I have a subordinate, whose beard is half black and half red."