I left them, feeling as weak as if I had been beaten.
Our manner to each other was cautious and restrained; he called me by my first name and my patronymic, and spoke to me as an equal.
"When you go to the shops, please buy me a quarter of a pound of Lapherm's tobacco, a hundred packets of Vitcorson's, and a pound of boiled sausage."
The money which he gave me was always unpleasantly heated by his hot hands. It was plain that he was a consumptive, and not long to be an inhabitant of this earth. He knew this, and would say in a calm, deep voice, twisting his pointed black beard:
"My illness is almost incurable. However, if I take plenty of meat I may get better—I may get better."
He ate an unbelievably large amount; he smoked cigarettes, which were only out of his lips when he was eating. Every day I bought him sausages, ham, sardines, but grandmother's sister said with an air of certainty, and for some reason maliciously:
"It is no use to feed Death with dainties; you cannot deceive him."
The mistress regarded my stepfather with an air of injury, reproachfully advised him to try this or that medicine, but made fun of him behind his back.
"A fine gentleman? The crumbs ought to be swept up more often in the dining-room, he says; crumbs cause the flies to multiply, he says."
The young mistress said this, and the old mistress repeated after her: