“They have been playing, but they’ve left off. They’ve been drinking tea, the official gentleman asked for liqueurs.”
“Stay, Trifon Borissovitch, stay, my good soul, I’ll see for myself. Now answer one more question: are the gypsies here?”
“You can’t have the gypsies now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities have sent them away. But we’ve Jews that play the cymbals and the fiddle in the village, so one might send for them. They’d come.”
“Send for them. Certainly send for them!” cried Mitya. “And you can get the girls together as you did then, Marya especially, Stepanida, too, and Arina. Two hundred roubles for a chorus!”
“Oh, for a sum like that I can get all the village together, though by now they’re asleep. Are the peasants here worth such kindness, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, or the girls either? To spend a sum like that on such coarseness and rudeness! What’s the good of giving a peasant a cigar to smoke, the stinking ruffian! And the girls are all lousy. Besides, I’ll get my daughters up for nothing, let alone a sum like that. They’ve only just gone to bed, I’ll give them a kick and set them singing for you. You gave the peasants champagne to drink the other day, e—ech!”
For all his pretended compassion for Mitya, Trifon Borissovitch had hidden half a dozen bottles of champagne on that last occasion, and had picked up a hundred‐rouble note under the table, and it had remained in his clutches.
“Trifon Borissovitch, I sent more than one thousand flying last time I was here. Do you remember?”
“You did send it flying. I may well remember. You must have left three thousand behind you.”
“Well, I’ve come to do the same again, do you see?”
And he pulled out his roll of notes, and held them up before the innkeeper’s nose.