“Tfu! What a funny line your thoughts seem to take. He hasn't hung himself a bit—why in the world should he?—on the contrary, he's gone away. I've just seen him off! My goodness, how that fellow can drink! We had three bottles of wine. Predposiloff was there too—but how the fellow drinks! Good heavens! he was singing in the carriage when the train went off! He thought of you, and kissed his hand to you, and sent his love. He's a scamp, that fellow, eh?”
Young Loboff had apparently had quite his share of the three bottles, his face was flushed and his utterance thick. Velchaninoff roared with laughter.
“So you ended up by weeping over each others shoulders, did you? Ha-ha-ha! Oh, you poetical, Schiller-ish, funny fellows, you!”
“Don't scold us. You must know he went down there yesterday and to-day, and he has withdrawn. He ‘sneaked’ like anything about Nadia and me. They've shut her up. There was such a row, but we wouldn't give way—and, my word, how the fellow drinks! He was always talking about you; but, of course, he is no companion for you. You are, more or less, a respectable sort of man, and must have belonged to society at some time of your life, though you seem to have retired into private life just now. Is it poverty, or what? I couldn't make head or tail of Pavel Pavlovitch's story.”
“Oh! Then it was he who gave you those interesting details about me?”
“Yes; don't be cross about it. It's better to be a citizen than ‘a swell’ any-day! The thing is one does not know whom to respect in Russia nowadays! Don't you think it a diseased feature of the times, in Russia, that one doesn't know whom to respect?”
“Quite so, quite so. Well, go on about Pavel Pavlovitch——”
“Well, he sat down in the railway carriage and began singing, then he cried a bit. It was really disgusting to see the fellow. I hate fools! Then he began to throw money to beggars ‘for the repose of Liza's soul,’ he said. Is that his wife?”
“Daughter.”
“What's the matter with your hand?”