"Certainly, certainly. Why, these are your last days."
"It would be worth while even for that reason to drink a little bottle," observed Swidwicki, "particularly as it is, besides, my birthday."
"If the calendar was a wine-cellar and the dates in it bottles, then your birthday would occur every day," answered Gronski.
"I swear to you upon everything at which I jeer, that, contrary to my habit and inclination, this time I speak the truth."
Saying this, he nodded to the waiter and ordered him to bring two bottles, calculating that afterwards more would be forthcoming. In the meantime Dolhanski said:
"I met Krzycki to-day. He looks poorly; somehow not himself, and he told me that he does not live with you but in a hotel. Did you by chance quarrel?"
"No. But he moved away from me and Pani Krzycki from Pani Otocka's."
"There is some kind of epidemic," exclaimed Swidwicki, "for my cutthroat is leaving me."
"Perhaps something has passed between Krzycki and Miss Anney," said Dolhanski. "I supposed that they were getting quite intimate. Did they part--or what?"
"A marchpane, that Englishwoman," interrupted Swidwicki; "but her maid has more electricity in her."