On his way down the spacious corridor he was stopped by Onufri, his cheeks still hollower and his drooping moustache still longer and considerably greyer than of yore. Pavel had once tried to make a convert of him, but found him “too stupid for abstract reasoning.” Onufri was polishing the floor. As Pavel came past he faced half way about and gave him a stern look from under his bushy eyebrows.
“They’ve pinched a gentleman, the blood-guzzlers.” Saying which he fell to dancing on his foot-cushions again.
“What do you mean?” Pavel asked, turning white as he paused.
“You know what I mean, sir. You know you do,” answered Onufri, going on with his work.
“Is it true? Who made the arrest? Gendarmes?”
“That’s it. I wouldn’t bother your Highness if the police’d nabbed a common crook, would I?”
The servant bent on his young master a long look of sympathetic reproach, adding under his breath:
“You had better give it all up, sir. Better let it go to the devil.”
“Give up what? What on earth are you prating about, Onufri?”