Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/275

 smoke, and nearer to me! (Petríshchev bends down and smokes over her.)

. He is getting near it, I tell you. Ah, what?

(restlessly groping around the Third Peasant). Here, here. I feel that it is here.

. Do you feel an efflux? (Grossmann bends down to the wallet and takes the spoon out of it.)

. Bravo! (Universal ecstasy.)

. So this is where our spoon was? (To the Peasant.) So that's what you did?

. What did I do? I did not take your spoon. Don't accuse me! I did not take it, I did not, and my soul knows nothing about it. Let him say what he please! I knew, when he came, that it would not lead to anything good. "Give me your purse," he said. I did not take it, so help me Christ, I did not! (The young people surround him and laugh.)

(angrily to his son). Eternally your foolishness! (To Third Peasant.) Don't worry, my friend! We know that you did not take it. It was only a trial.

(takes off his bandage and pretends to be waking up). A little water, if you please. (Everybody is busy about him.)

. Let us go from here to the coachman's room. I will show you a bitch I have there! Épâtant! Ah, what!

. What a nasty word! Can't you say "dog"?

. Impossible. One could not say about you: What an épâtant man Betsy is? One has to say "girl," just so in this case. Ah, what? Márya Konstantínovna, is it so? Was it good? (Laughs.)

. Well, let us go!