"I don't mind betting that there's a flavour of bribery about it," observed a respectably dressed, closely cropped young gentleman.
"Bribery!" Polzunkov caught him up.
"'Oh, may I be a Liberal, Such as many I have seen!'
If you, too, when it is your lot to serve in the provinces, do not warm your hands at your country's hearth.... For as an author said: 'Even the smoke of our native land is sweet to us.' She is our Mother, gentlemen, our Mother Russia; we are her babes, and so we suck her!"
There was a roar of laughter.
"Only would you believe it, gentlemen, I have never taken bribes?" said Polzunkov, looking round at the whole company distrustfully.
A prolonged burst of Homeric laughter drowned Polzunkov's words in guffaws.
"It really is so, gentlemen...."
But here he stopped, still looking round at every one with a strange expression of face; perhaps—who knows?—at that moment the thought came into his mind that he was more honest than many of all that honourable company.... Anyway, the serious expression of his face did not pass away till the general merriment was quite over.
"And so," Polzunkov began again when all was still, "though I never did take bribes, yet that time I transgressed; I put in my pocket a bribe ... from a bribe-taker ... that is, there were certain papers in my hands which, if I had cared to send to a certain person, it would have gone ill with Fedosey Nikolaitch."