“Thou art a lewd fellow; hold thy tongue with thy instigation of the Evil One.”... But the voices of both of us were like those of birds, and we were shaking as though in a fever—in the darkness. I lighted a candle: there was no dog, and no noise whatever—only Fílka and I as white as clay. And I must inform you, gentlemen—you can believe me or not—but from that night forth for the space of six weeks the same thing went on. At last I even got accustomed to it and took to extinguishing my light because I cannot sleep with a light. “Let him fidget!” I thought. “It doesn’t harm me.”
“But—I see—that you do not belong to the cowardly squad,”—interrupted Antón Stepánitch, with a half-scornful, half-condescending laugh. “The hussar is immediately perceptible!”
“I should not be frightened at you, in any case,”—said Porfíry Kapítonitch, and for a moment he really did look like a hussar.—“But listen further.”
A neighbour came to me, the same one with whom I was in the habit of playing cards. He dined with me on what God had sent, and lost fifty rubles to me for his visit; night was drawing on—it was time for him to go. But I had calculations of my own:—“Stop and spend the night with me, Vasíly Vasílitch; to-morrow thou wilt win it back, God willing.”
My Vasíly Vasílitch pondered and pondered—and stayed. I ordered a bed to be placed for him in my own chamber.... Well, sir, we went to bed, smoked, chattered,—chiefly about the feminine sex, as is fitting in bachelor society,—and laughed, as a matter of course. I look; Vasíly Vasílitch has put out his candle and has turned his back on me; that signifies: “Schlafen Sie wohl.” I waited a little and extinguished my candle also. And imagine: before I had time to think to myself, “What sort of performance will there be now?” my dear little animal began to make a row. And that was not all; he crawled out from under the bed, walked across the room, clattering his claws on the floor, waggling his ears, and suddenly collided with a chair which stood by the side of Vasíly Vasílitch’s bed!
“Porfíry Kapítonitch,”—says Vasíly Vasílitch, and in such an indifferent voice, you know,—“I didn’t know that thou hadst taken to keeping a dog. What sort of an animal is it—a setter?”
“I have no dog,”—said I,—“and I never have had one.”
“Thou hast not indeed! But what’s this?”
“What is this?”—said I.—“See here now; light the candle and thou wilt find out for thyself.”
“It isn’t a dog?”