"Who are you, then, Ruski?" cried Janoc at last, speaking French, since the Russian only glared at him when he swore in his quaint English.
Yet the Russian grumbled in English in his beard: "No French."
"And no Italian, and no Spanish, and no German, and very, very small English," growled Janoc in English, frowning at him; "Well, then, shall we converse, sare?"
"What is that—'converse'?" asked the Russian.
Janoc shrugged disgustedly, while the little Frenchman, whose eyes twinkled at every tiff between the pair, said politely in French:
"We await your play, m'sieurs."
Twice, on the very edge of the precipice of open hostilities, Janoc and the Russian stopped short; but a little after two o'clock, when much absinthe and vodka had been drunk, an outbreak took place: for the Russian then cried out loudly above the hubbub of tongues:
"Oh, you—how you call it?—tcheeeet!"
"Who? I—me?" cried Janoc sharply, pale, half-standing—"cheat?"
"Yes—tcheeet, you tcheeet!" insisted the bearded Slav. And now the little Frenchman with the crooked nose, who foreknew that the table was about to be upset, stood up quickly, picked up his thimbleful of anisette, and holding it in hand, awaited with merry eyes the outcome.