would be possible to be an Ilya, destroy the whole of Europe and take Judas Petunikoff for one’s valet. He’d do it.…Give him a hundred rubles a month and he’d do it! But he would be a bad valet, because he would soon begin to steal.…”

“Another reason why the thin woman is better than the stout one is that she costs less,” the Deacon was saying convincingly. “My first Deaconess used to buy twelve arshins for her clothes, the second only ten…And so on even in the matter of food.”

Taras grinned guiltily. Turning his head towards the Deacon and looking straight at him with his one eye, he said in confusion:

“I had a wife once, too.”

“Oh! that might happen to anyone,” remarked Kuvalda; “but go on with your lies.”

“She was thin, but she ate a lot, and even died from overeating.”

“You poisoned her, you cripple!” said Bag of Bones, confidently.

“No, by God! It was from eating sturgeon,” said Taras.

“But I tell you, you poisoned her!” declared Bag of Bones, decisively.

It often happened, that having said something quite absurd, he kept on repeating it, without any attempt to support his argument, beginning in a childish capricious tone, and gradually raising his voice to a frenzied shriek.

The Deacon stood up for his friend. “No, he did not poison her. He had no reason to do so.”

“But I say he poisoned her!” swore Bag of Bones.

“Silence!” shouted the Captain, threateningly, his boredom intensifying his ill-temper. He looked at his friends with a fierce stare, and not discovering anything to further provoke his rage in their half-tipsy faces, he lowered his head, sat still for a little while, and then turned over on his back on the ground. Meteór was nibbling cucumbers. He took a cucumber in his hand without looking at it, pushed nearly half of it into his mouth, and bit it with his yellow teeth, so that the juice spurted out in all directions and ran over his cheeks. He did not seem to want to eat, but this game amused him. Martyanoff sat motionless in the position he had taken when he first sat down on the ground, like a statue, and looked in a fixed sullen manner at the huge bottle, already half empty. Tyapa stared at the ground, trying to chew a piece of meat too hard for his old teeth. Bag of Bones lay on his belly and coughed, shaking his meager little body. The rest of the dark, silent figures sat and lay around in various positions; their tatters made them look like monstrous animals, created by some strange, uncouth and fanciful force to make a mockery of man.

sang the Deacon in low tones, embracing Aleksei Maksimovitch, who was smiling blissfully into his face.

Taras-and-a-Half giggled voluptuously.

The night was approaching. High up in the sky stars flared up, and so did the lanterns on the mountain and in the town. The mournful whistles of steamers were heard from the river, and the doors of Vaviloff’s pub opened with a screech and a rattle of glass. Two dark figures entered the court-yard, came up to the carousing crowd, and one of them asked in a hoarse whisper: