"All right, take it and welcome."
Kuvalda felt angry with these men. Among them all there was not one worthy of hearing his oratory or of understanding him.
"I wonder where the teacher is?" he asked loudly.
Martyanoff looked at him and said, "He will come soon.. . ."
"I am positive that he will come, but he won't come in a carriage.
Let us drink to your future health. If you kill any rich man
go halves with me . . . then I shall go to America, brother.
To those . . . what do you call them? Limpas? Pampas?
"I will go there and I will work my way until I become the President of the United States, and then I will challenge the whole of Europe to war and I will blow it up! I will buy the army . . . in Europe that is—I will invite the French, the Germans, the Turks, and so on, and I will kill them by the hands of their own relatives . . . Just as Elia Marumets bought a Tartar with a Tartar. With money it would be possible even for Elia to destroy the whole of Europe and to take Judas Petunikoff for his valet. He would go . . . Give him a hundred roubles a month and he would go! But he would be a bad valet, because he would soon begin to steal. . . ."
"Now, besides that, the thin woman is better than the stout one, because she costs one less," said the Deacon, convincingly. "My first Deaconess used to buy twelve arshins for her clothes, but the second one only ten. And so on even in the matter of provisions and food."
Paltara Taras smiled guiltily. Turning his head towards the Deacon and looking straight at him, he said, with conviction:
"I had a wife once, too."
"Oh! That happens to everyone," remarked Kuvalda; "but go on with your lies."