"I began to drink beer and smoke cigars when I was working under a German. The Germans, my brother, are a business-like race—such wild fowl! Drinking beer is a pleasant occupation, but I have never got used to smoking cigars. And when you 've been smoking, your wife grumbles: 'What is it that you smell of? It is like the smell at the harness-makers.' Ah, brother, the longer we live, the more artful we grow. Well, well, true to oneself—"
Placing the oar against the side of the boat, he took up his gun and shot at a Chinaman on a roof. No harm came to the latter; the shot buried itself in the roof and the wall, raising a dusty smoke.
"That was a miss," he admitted without regret, and he again loaded his gun.
"How do you get on with the girls? Are you keen on them? No? Why, I was in love when I was only thirteen."
He told me, as if he were telling a dream, the story of his first love for the housemaid of the architect to whom he had been apprenticed. Softly splashed the gray water, washing the corners of the buildings; beyond the cathedral dully gleamed a watery waste; black twigs rose here and there above it. In the icon-painter's workshop they often sang the Seminarski song:
"O blue sea,
Stormy sea...."
That blue sea must have been deadly dull.
"I never slept at nights," went on my master. "Sometimes I got out of bed and stood at her door, shivering like a dog. It was a cold house! The master visited her at night. He might have discovered me, but I was not afraid, not I!"
He spoke thoughtfully, like a person looking at an old worn-out coat, and wondering if he could wear it once more.
"She noticed me, pitied me, unfastened her door, and called me: 'Come in, you little fool.'"