Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 03.djvu/29

Rh natured laugh. "Gúskov lives with liim, and the adjutant has almost gambled him away, too. Is it not so, Gúskov?" He turned to Gúskov.

Gúskov laughed. It was a pitiable, sickly smile, which entirely changed the expression of his face. This change of expression made me think that I had met the man before; besides, his name, Gúskov, seemed familiar to me; but I was absolutely unable to recall when and where I had met him.

"Yes," said Gúskov, raising his hands to his moustache and dropping them again, without having touched it, "Pável Dmítrievich has had no luck during this expedition,—a kind of a veine de malheur," he added, with a laboured but pure French pronunciation, whereat I again thought that I had met him somewhere, and had met him often. "I know Pável Dmítrievich well, and he confides everj^thing to me," he continued. "We are old acquaintances, that is, he likes me," he added, apparently becoming frightened at his too bold assertion that he was an old acquaintance of the adjutant's. "Pavel Dmitrievich plays excellently; but what has happened to him is truly remarkable; he is almost ruined,— la chance a tourné," he added, turning more particularly to me.

At first we were listening to Gúskov with condescending attention, but the moment he used that French phrase we all involuntarily turned away from him.

"I have played with him a hundred times, and you will admit that it is strange," said Lieutenant O, with a peculiar accent upon this word, "remarkably strange, I have never won as much as a dime from him. Why is it I can win from others?"

"Pável Dmítrievich plays excellently,—I have known him for a long time," I said. I had really known the adjutant for several years, had seen him frequently playing what, according to the means of the oflficers, might be