The general, the colonel, and even the major had their uniforms completely unbuttoned, so that their noble silk suspenders showed slightly, while the gentlemen officers, observing due respect, remained buttoned up except for the bottom three buttons.

"We can have a look at her now," said the general. "Please, my good fellow," he added, turning to his aide-de-camp, a rather adroit young man of pleasant appearance, "tell them to bring the bay mare here! You'll see for yourselves." Here the general drew on his pipe and let the smoke out. "She still hasn't been well cared for-cursed little town, not a decent stable in it. The horse, puff, puff, is quite a decent one!"

"And have you, puff, puff, had her long, Your Excellency?" said Chertokutsky.

"Puff, puff, puff, well… puff, not so long. It's only two years since I brought her from the stud farm!"

"And was she broken when you got her, or did they break her here?"

"Puff, puff, pu, pu, pu… u… u… ff, here." Having said which, the general vanished completely in smoke.

Meanwhile, a soldier sprang out of the stable, the sound of hooves was heard, another finally appeared in a white coverall, with an enormous black mustache, leading by the bridle the twitching and shying horse, which, suddenly raising its head, all but raised the crouching soldier into the air along with his mustache. "Now, now, Agrafena Ivanovna!" he said as he led her to the porch.

The mare's name was Agrafena Ivanovna; strong and wild as a southern beauty, she drummed her hooves on the wooden porch and suddenly stood still.

The general, lowering his pipe, began looking at Agrafena Ivanovna with a contented air. The colonel himself stepped down from the porch and took Agrafena Ivanovna by the muzzle. The major himself patted Agrafena Ivanovna on the leg. The rest clucked their tongues.

Chertokutsky got down from the porch and went behind her.

The soldier, standing at attention and holding the bridle, stared straight into the visitor's eyes, as if he wished to jump into them.

"Very, very good," said Chertokutsky, "a shapely horse! How's her gait, Your Excellency, if I may ask?"

"Her gait is good, only… devil knows… that fool of a vet gave her some sort of pills, and she's been sneezing for two days now."

"Very, very nice. And do you have a corresponding equipage, Your Excellency?"

"Equipage?… But this is a saddle horse."

"I know that. But I asked Your Excellency about it so as to learn whether you have corresponding equipages for your other horses."

"Well, as for equipages, I don't have quite enough. I must confess to tell you, I've long wanted to own a modern carriage. I wrote about it to my brother, who is now in Petersburg, but I don't know whether he'll send me one or not."

"It seems to me, Your Excellency," the colonel observed, "that there's no better carriage than a Viennese one."

"You think rightly, puff, puff, puff!"

"I have a surpassing carriage, Your Excellency, real Viennese workmanship."

"Which? The one you came in?"

"Oh, no. This one's just for driving around, for my own use, but that one… it's astonishing, light as a feather; and when you get in, it's simply as if-with Your Excellency's permission-as if a nurse were rocking you in a cradle!"

"So it's comfortable?"

"Very, very comfortable; cushions, springs-all just like a pic-ture.

"That's good."

"And so roomy! I mean, Your Excellency, I've never yet seen the like of it. When I was in the service, I used to put ten bottles of rum and twenty pounds of tobacco in the trunk; and besides that I'd take with me some six changes of uniform, linens, and two chibouks, Your Excellency, as long-if you'll permit the expression-as tapeworms, and you could put a whole ox in the pouches."

"That's good."

"I paid four thousand for it, Your Excellency."

"Judging by the price, it must be good. And you bought it yourself?"

"No, Your Excellency, it happened to come to me. It was bought by a friend of mine, a rare person, a childhood friend, you'd get along perfectly with him. Between us there was no yours or mine, it was all the same. I won it from him at cards. Perhaps you'd care to do me the honor, Your Excellency, of coming to dine with me tomorrow and of having a look at the carriage at the same time?"

"I don't know what to say to you. Myself alone, it's somehow… Or, if you please, perhaps the gentlemen officers can come along?"

"I humbly invite the gentlemen officers as well. Gentlemen, I would consider myself greatly honored to have the pleasure of seeing you in my house!"

The colonel, the major, and the other officers thanked him with a courteous bow.

"I personally am of the opinion, Your Excellency, that if one buys something, it ought to be good, and if it's bad, there's no point in acquiring it. At my place, when you honor me with your visit tomorrow, I'll show you a thing or two that I've acquired for the management of my estate."

The general looked and let the smoke out of his mouth.

Chertokutsky was extremely pleased to have invited the gentlemen officers; in anticipation, he ordered pates and sauces in his head, kept glancing very gaily at the gentlemen officers, who, for their part, also doubled their benevolence toward him, as could be noticed by their eyes and little gestures of a half-bowing sort. Chertokutsky's step grew somehow more casual, his voice more languid: it sounded like a voice heavy with pleasure.

"There, Your Excellency, you will make the acquaintance of the mistress of the house."

"I shall be very pleased," said the general, stroking his mustache.

After which Chertokutsky wanted to go home at once, so as to make all the preparations for receiving his guests at the next day's dinner in good time; he had already picked up his hat, but it hap- pened somehow strangely that he stayed a little longer. Meanwhile the card tables were set up in the room. Soon the whole company broke up into foursomes for whist and settled in different corners of the general's rooms.

Candles were brought. For a long time, Chertokutsky did not know whether to sit down to whist or not. But since the gentlemen officers had begun to invite him, he thought it quite against social rules to decline. He sat down. Imperceptibly, a glass of punch turned up before him, which he, forgetting himself, drank straight off that same minute. Having played two rubbers, Chertokutsky again found a glass of punch under his hand, which he, forgetting himself, again drank off, after first saying, "It's time, gentlemen, really, it's time I went home." But he sat down again for a second game. Meanwhile the conversation took it's own particular turn in different corners of the room. Those playing whist were rather silent; but the nonplayers sitting to the side on sofas conducted their own conversation. In one corner a cavalry staff captain, putting a pillow under his side and a pipe in his mouth, spoke quite freely and fluently of his amorous adventures and held the full attention of the circle around him. One extremely fat landowner with short arms, somewhat resembling two potatoes growing on him, listened with an extraordinarily sweet look and only tried now and then to send his short arm behind his broad back to get out his snuffbox. In another corner, a rather heated argument sprang up about squadron exercises, and Chertokutsky, who by then had twice played a jack instead of a queen, would suddenly interfere in other people's conversation and cry out from his corner: "What year was that?" or "What regiment?"-not noticing that the question was sometimes completely beside the point. Finally, a few minutes before suppertime, the whist came to an end, though it still went on in words and everyone's head seemed filled with whist. Chertokutsky remembered very well that he had won a lot, but he had nothing in his hands, and, getting up from the table, he stood for a long time in the position of a man who finds no handkerchief in his pocket. Meanwhile supper was served. It goes without saying that there was no shortage of wines and that Chertokutsky almost inadvertently had sometimes to fill his glass because there were bottles standing to right and left of him.