“Your health, Gounsovski. But you have no worry about that.”
“Why?” demanded Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff in equivocal fashion.
“Because he is too useful to the government,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.
“No,” replied Annouchka; “to the revolutionaries.”
All broke out laughing. Gounsovski recovered his slipping glasses by his usual quick movement and sniggered softly, insinuatingly, like fat boiling in the pot:
“So they say. And it is my strength.”
“His system is excellent,” said the prince. “As he is in with everybody, everybody is in with the police, without knowing it.”
“They say... ah, ah... they say...” (Athanase was choking over a little piece of toast that he had soaked in his soup) “they say that he has driven away all the hooligans and even all the beggars of the church of Kasan.”
Thereupon they commenced to tell stories of the hooligans, street-thieves who since the recent political troubles had infested St. Petersburg and whom nobody, could get rid of without paying for it.
Athanase Georgevitch said: