Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/93

Rh enough for him to bore me as though I had seen and listened to him for a whole eternity. I hate the poor man. I wither away beneath his quiet, even voice and his bookish language. His stories make me stupid. . . . He cherishes the kindliest feelings towards me and talks to me only to give me pleasure. I reward him by staring at his face as if I wanted to hypnotise him, and thinking "Go away. Go, go. . . ." But he is proof against my mental suggestion and sits, sits, sits. . ..

While he sits with me I cannot rid myself of the idea: "When I die, it's quite possible that he will be appointed in my place." Then my poor audience appears to me as an oasis where the stream has dried up, and I am unkind to Piotr Ignatievich, and silent and morose as if he were guilty of such thoughts and not I myself. When he begins, as usual, to glorify the German scholars, I no longer jest good-naturedly, but murmur sternly:

"They're fools, your Germans . . ."

It's like the late Professor Nikita Krylov when he was bathing with Pirogov at Reval. He got angry with the water, which was very cold, and swore about "These scoundrelly Germans." I behave badly to Piotr Ignatievich; and it's only when he is going away and I see through the window his grey hat disappearing behind the garden fence, that I want to call him back and say: "Forgive me, my dear fellow."

The dinner goes yet more wearily than in