Page:The Steel Flea.djvu/68

 spoiled nothing: take and look through the very strongest melkoscope."

Platoff ran back, told about the melkoscope, and merely threatened the left-handed man.

"I'll give it to you well, yet," says he, "you thus-and-thus-and-so!" And he ordered the Cossacks of the Suite to fasten the left-handed man's elbows still more strongly behind him, and himself mounted the stairs, fuming and reciting a prayer in one breath: "Blessed Mother of the Blessed King, pure, all-pure," and so on, as is proper. And all the courtiers who were standing on the stairs turned away from him and thought: "Platoff is caught, at last, and in a few moments he will be driven from the palace,"—for they could not endure him on account of his bravery.