"And I can't endure either of you," cried the virago disdainfully. "You are both of you bores and can't tell me anything ideal. I know one little story about you, your Excellency—don't turn up your nose, please—how a man-servant swept you out from under a married couple's bed one morning."
"Nasty woman," the general muttered through his teeth.
"Avdotya Ignatyevna, ma'am," the shopkeeper wailed suddenly again, "my dear lady, don't be angry, but tell me, am I going through the ordeal by torment now, or is it something else?"
"Ah, he is at it again, as I expected! For there's a smell from him which means he is turning round!"
"I am not turning round, ma'am, and there's no particular smell from me, for I've kept my body whole as it should be, while you're regularly high. For the smell is really horrible even for a place like this. I don't speak of it, merely from politeness."
"Ah, you horrid, insulting wretch! He positively stinks and talks about me."
"Oh-ho-ho-ho! If only the time for my requiem would come quickly: I should hear their tearful voices over my head, my wife's lament and my children's soft weeping!..."
"Well, that's a thing to fret for! They'll stuff themselves with funeral rice and go home.... Oh, I wish somebody would wake up!"
"Avdotya Ignatyevna," said the insinuating government clerk, "wait a bit, the new arrivals will speak."
"And are there any young people among them?"