“I also engaged them, so I pay half. You won't take it? I don't understand such favours! Surely you don't think because you are as rich as the devil that you have the right to confer such favours on me? The devil take it! I engaged Karpov, and I will pay him! I want none of your halves! I wrote the telegram!”
“In a restaurant, Serezha, you may pay as much as you like, but my house is not a restaurant.… Besides, I really don't understand why you are making all this fuss. I can't understand your insistent prodigality. You have but little money, while I am rolling in wealth.… Justice itself is on my side!”
“Then you will not take it? No? Well, then, you needn't!…”
I go up to the faintly burning candles and applying the banknotes to the flame set them on fire and fling them on the ground. Suddenly a groan is torn from Kaetan's breast. He opens his eyes wide, he grows pale, and falling with the whole weight of his heavy body on the ground tries to extinguish the money with the palms of his hands.… In this he succeeds.
“I don't understand!” he says, placing the slightly burnt notes in his pocket. “To burn money? As if it were last year's chaff or love letters!… It's better that I should give it to the poor than let it be consumed by the flames.”
I go into the house.… There in every room on the sofas and the carpets the weary gipsies are lying, overcome by fatigue. My Tina is sleeping on the divan in the “mosaic drawing-room.”
She lies stretched out and breathing heavily. Her teeth clenched, her face pale.… She is evidently dreaming of the swing.… The Scops-owl is going through all the rooms, looking with her sharp eyes sardonically at the people who had so suddenly broken into the deadly quiet of this forgotten estate.… She is not going about and giving her old limbs so much trouble without an object.
That is all that my memory retained after two wild nights; all the rest had escaped my drunken brain, or is not appropriate for description.… But this is enough!
At no other time had Zorka borne me with so much zest as on the morning after the burning of the banknotes. She also wanted to go home.… The lake quietly rippled its sparkling waves in which the rising sun was reflected and prepared for its daily sleep. The woods and the willows that border the lake stood motionless as if in morning prayer. It is difficult to describe the feelings that filled my soul at the time.… Without entering into details, I will only say that I was unspeakably glad and at the same time almost consumed by shame when, turning out of the Count's homestead, I saw on the bank of the lake the holy old face, all wrinkled by honest work and illness, of venerable Mikhey. In appearance Mikhey resembles the fishermen of the Bible. His hair and beard are white as snow, and he gazes contemplatively at the sky.… When he stands motionless on the bank and his eyes follow the chasing clouds, you can imagine that he sees angels in the sky.… I like such faces!…