“I must go home!” the jeune premier heard.
“Where is home?”
“To Vyazma . . . to my home. . . .”
“It is a thousand miles to Vyazma . . . my boy,” sighed Brama-Glinsky, drumming on the window-pane. “And what do you want to go to Vyazma for?”
“I want to die there.”
“What next! Now he’s dying! He has fallen ill for the first time in his life, and already he fancies that his last hour is come. . . . No, my boy, no cholera will carry off a buffalo like you. You’ll live to be a hundred. . . . Where’s the pain?”
“There’s no pain, but I . . . feel . . .”
“You don’t feel anything, it all comes from being too healthy. Your surplus energy upsets you. You ought to get jolly tight—drink, you know, till your whole inside is topsy-turvy. Getting drunk is wonderfully restoring. . . . Do you remember how screwed you were at Rostov on the Don? Good Lord, the very thought of it is alarming! Sashka and I together could only just carry in the barrel, and you emptied it alone, and even sent for rum afterwards. . . . You got so drunk you were catching devils in a sack and pulled a lamp-post up by the roots. Do you remember? Then you went off to beat the Greeks. . . .”
Under the influence of these agreeable reminiscences Shtchiptsov’s face brightened a little and his eyes began to shine.
“And do you remember how I beat Savoikin the manager?” he muttered, raising his head. “But there! I’ve beaten thirty-three managers in my time, and I can’t remember how many smaller fry. And what managers they were! Men who would not permit the very winds to touch them! I’ve beaten two celebrated authors and one painter!”