"Rushing away to my room, I poured out a glass of water, and emptied into it the powder; whereupon the water thickened, fizzed, and became topped with foam. Oh, a terrible moment it was!... Then I drank the mixture. Yet no burning sensation ensued, and though I listened to my vitals, nothing was to be heard in that quarter, but, on the contrary, my head began to lighten, and I found myself losing the sense of self-pity which had brought me almost to the point of tears.... Shall we settle ourselves here?"
Before us a large stone, capped with green moss and climbing plants, was good-humouredly thrusting upwards a broad, flat face beneath which the body had, like that of the hero Sviatogov, sunken into the earth through its own weight until only the face, a visage worn with aeons of meditation, was now visible. On every side, also, had oak-trees overgrown and encompassed the bulk of the projection, as though they too had been made of stone, with their branches drooping sufficiently low to brush the wrinkles of the ancient monolith. Kalinin seated himself on his haunches under the overhanging rim of the stone, and said as he snapped some twigs in half:
"This is where we ought to have been sitting whilst the rain was coming down."
"And so say I," I rejoined. "But pray continue your story."
"Yes, when you have put a match to the fire."
Whereafter, further withdrawing his spare frame under the stone, so that he might stretch himself at full length, Kalinin continued:
"I walked to the pantry quietly enough, though my legs were tottering beneath me, and I had a cold sensation in my breast. Suddenly I heard the dining-room echo to a merry peal of laughter from Valentina Ignatievna, and the General reply to that outburst:
"'Ah, that man! Ah, these servants of ours! Why, the fellow would do ANYTHING for a piatak '[A silver five-kopeck piece, equal in value to 2 1/4 pence.]
"To this my beloved one retorted:
"'Oh, uncle, uncle! Is it only a piatak that I am worth?