Beat the pace, beat!
Don’t spare your feet!
In our ladies’ apartment the old drunken fool, the Princess Abbess Rjévskaya, a veritable witch, whirled away in a dance, lifting her skirts above her head and singing in a voice hoarse with drink:—
Tune up! tune up! my music sweet
Work on, work on my staff,
My father-in-law from the stove
Has fallen into a trough!
Had I but known this would occur
I would have placed him at the top,
And falling, he’d have broken his head....