Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/124

92 place on the coachman's box, — it's jollier, — I can see everything, and Filípp lets me guide the horses, and sometimes I take the whip, too. And those that drive by sometimes get it," he added, with an expressive gesture. "It's nice!"

"Your Grace," said a lackey, who had just entered the antechamber, "Filípp wants to know what you have deigned to do with the whip?"

"How? What? I gave it back to him."

"He says you didn't."

"Well, then I hung it on the lamp-post."

"Filípp says that it is not on the lamp-post either, and you had better admit that you have lost it, and so Filípp will with his own money answer for your jokes," continued the angry lackey, becoming more and more animated.

The lackey, whose appearance was that of a respectable and stern man, evidently took Filípp's side with zeal, and was determined by all means to clear up the matter. By a natural feeling of delicacy, I stepped aside, as if I had not noticed anything; but the lackeys present acted differently, they came nearer, and approvingly looked at the old servant.

"Well, if I lost it, I lost it," said Etienne, avoiding any further explanations. "I'll pay him whatever the whip is worth. How funny!" he added, walking up to me, and drawing me after him into the drawing-room.

"No, excuse me, master, what are you going to pay with? I know how you pay. You have not paid Márya Vlásevna her two dimes these eight months; it is now two years you have not payed me, and Petrúsha — "

"Will you shut up?" cried out the young prince, turning pale from anger. "I will tell it all — "

"I will tell it all, I will tell it all!" said the lackey. "It is not good, your Grace!" he added with great emphasis, just as we entered the parlour, and as he was going with the cloaks to the clothes-press.