“Do you mean the lawyer who composed your petition?” asked Petunikoff, calmly, and added, with a sigh, “I have no doubt he would have landed you in a rather awkward fix…had we not taken pity on you.”

“Ah!” And the distressed soldier raised his hand. “There are two of them.…One of them discovered it, the other wrote the petition, the accursed reporter!”

“Why the reporter?”

“He writes for the papers.…He is one of your lodgers …what vermin they are.…Clear them away for Christ’s sake! The robbers! They rouse and egg on everyone in the street. One cannot live for them.…Desperate fellows, all of them.…One has to look out or they’ll rob or set fire to you.”

“And this reporter, who is he?” asked Petunikoff, with interest.

“He? A drunkard. He was a teacher, but got kicked out, drank himself to destruction…now he writes for the papers and composes petitions. A trickster.”

“H’m! And did he write your petition too? So-so, I suppose it was he who wrote of the flaws in the building. The scaffolding was not safe, or what was it?”

“He did! I know it for a fact! The dog! He read it aloud in here and boasted: ‘Now I have caused Petunikoff some trouble.’ ”

“Ye-es…Well, then, do you want to make peace?”

“To make peace?” The soldier lowered his head and pondered. “Ah! This is a dark life!” he said in an injured voice, scratching his head.

“One should get enlightened,” Petunikoff advised him, lighting a cigarette.

“Enlightened? It is not that, my dear sir; but don’t you see there is no freedom? Don’t you see what a life I lead? I live in fear and trembling…deprived of the so desirable freedom in my movements. And why is that? Because this miserable little teacher writes about me in the papers.…Sanitary inspectors are summoned…fines have to be paid.…Then your lodgers might at any moment set fire to the place or rob and kill me.…I am powerless against them. They are not afraid of the police, they rather like going to prison, they get their food for nothing there.”

“Well—we will have them turned out if we come to terms with you,” promised Petunikoff.

“What terms do you suggest then?” asked Vaviloff, sadly and sullenly.

“Tell me yours.”

“Well, give me the six hundred mentioned in the claim.”

“Won’t you take a hundred rubles?” asked the merchant, calmly, looking fixedly at his companion, and smiling softly. “I will not give one ruble more…” he added.

After this, he took out his eyeglasses, and began slowly cleaning them with his handkerchief. Vaviloff looked at him with despair and respect at the same time. The calm face of Petunikoff, his big gray eyes, the large cheekbones, every line of his thickset body betokened self-confidence and a well-balanced mind. Vaviloff liked Petunikoff’s straightforward and friendly manner of addressing him, without pretensions, as if he were an equal, though Vaviloff understood well enough that Petunikoff was his superior, he being only a soldier. Looking at him, almost with admiration, he felt a rush of curiosity overcome him, and, forgetting for a moment the matter in hand, he respectfully asked Petunikoff: