Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/522

484 judge from the fact that Sergeant Mikhaíl Doroféich himself had him make his clothes for him, he must have reached a certain artistic perfection in it.

The year before, while in camp, Velenchúk had undertaken to make a fine overcoat for Mikhail Doroféich; but in the night, when, after cutting the cloth and fixing the lining, he lay down to sleep with the goods under his head, a misfortune befell him: the cloth, which had cost seven roubles, had disappeared. With tears in his eyes, trembling lips, and restrained sobs, Velenchúk announced the fact to the sergeant. Mikhaíl Doroféich was furious. In the first moment of his anger he threatened the tailor, but later, being a man of means, and good at heart, he dropped the whole matter and did not ask any restitution of the value of the overcoat. However much bustling Velenchúk fretted and wept, as he was telling about his misfortune, the thief did not show up. Though there were strong suspicions against a desperate debauchee of a soldier, Chernóv by name, who was sleeping in the same tent with him, there were no positive proofs. The sagacious commander, Mikhaíl Doroféich, being a man of means and in some kind of partnership with the superintendent of arms and the steward, the aristocrats of the battery, very soon completely forgot the loss of that particular overcoat; Velenchúk, on the contrary, could not forget his misfortune. The soldiers said that they were afraid all the time that he would lay hands on himself or run away into the mountains, for this unfortunate accident had affected him powerfully. He did not eat, nor drink; he could not work, and wept all the time. Three days later he appeared before Mikhaíl Doroféich, and, all pale, drew with trembling hands a gold coin out of his rolled up sleeve, and handed it to him.

"Upon my word, this is all I have, Mikhaíl Doroféich, and I have borrowed it from Zhdánov," he said, sobbing again. "The two roubles that are wanting I will give