The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to the cadets, and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and having made a touching grimace, began to patter:
“Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to speak, of the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you not lend to a little old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous regions, one good old cigarette? I be poor. Omnia mea mecum porto. But I do adore the weed.”
And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got into a free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent right leg, put his hand to his side, and began to sing in a wizened falsetto:
“It used to be that I gave dinners,
In rivers flowed the champagne wine;
But now I have not even bread crusts,
Nor for a split, oh brother mine.
It used to be—in the Saratov
The doorman rushed, and was so fine;
But now all drive me in the neck,
Give for a split, oh brother mine.”
“Gentlemen!” suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting short his singing and smiting himself on the chest. “Here I behold you, and know that you are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko; but I, too, in a certain respect, am a military hound. In my time, when I was studying for a forest ranger, all our department of woods and forests was military; and for that reason, knocking at the diamond-studded, golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you—donate toward the raising for an ensign of taxation of a wee measure of spiritus vini, which same is taken of the monks also.”
“Roly!” cried the stout Kitty from the other end, “show the young officers the lightning; or else, look you, you’re taking the money only for nothing, you good-for-nothing camel.”
“Right away!” merrily responded Roly-Poly. “Most illustrious benefactors, turn your attention this way. Living Pictures. Thunder Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the unrecognized dramaturgist who concealed himself under the pseudonym of Roly-Poly. The first picture.
“‘It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun illumined the blossoming meadows and environs ...’”
Roly-Poly’s Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish smile; and the eyes narrowed into half-circles.