Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/28

4 the tears which he has provoked through eating a morsel of ham, thickly smeared with mustard. "Whew! It's got into my head and all my joints. Your French mustard couldn't do that, not even if you swallowed a whole pot of it."

"Some like French mustard, and some Russian," remarks Champune mildly.

"Nobody likes French mustard, except the French. But give what you like to a Frenchman,—he'll eat it all up; frogs and rats and cockroaches. Ugh! For instance, you don't like this ham because it's Russian; but give you roasted glass and say it's French, and you'll begin to eat and smack your lips. Your idea is, that all Russian things are rotten."

"I don't say so!"

"All Russian things are rotten, but French,—oh, c'est très joli! Your idea is, that there's no better country than France, but my idea is,—well, what is France, honestly speaking? A chunk of earth! Send our local police official there, and within a month he'll ask to be transferred; no room to move! You can travel through all your France in a single day, but in our country you go out of the gate,—no end to be seen. You travel and travel

"Yes, monsieur, Russia is a tremendous country."

"That it is! Your idea is, that there's no better people than the French. An educated,