A Tartar servant with a flat yellow face was watching the cooking; he wore a soiled blue blouse and trousers; his throat and chest were bare and the perspiration rolled from under his oily hair.
He regarded the newcomer with a look of complete stupidity and turned his gaze again to his cooking.
He appeared to be no more impressed by the gentleman’s brilliancy than the gentleman was by his dirt and disorder. Only, as that person was leaving the kitchen, the taciturn servant vouchsafed a warning.
“If you come with unpleasant news, Danilovitch Mentchikoff, you had better keep them for a while.”
“He is in a bad humor?” asked the Prince quickly.
“He was drinking all night,” replied the Tartar. “And now he seems to be in a melancholy. What am I to do about the dinner, Danilovitch Mentchikoff? He will not bear me in the room—and as for you, he will beat you like a dog.”
“Well, when he has beaten me, we will have dinner,” replied the Prince, and he turned away and went upstairs.
He entered the front bedroom which was that with the balcony over the door; a good-sized chamber very plainly furnished with a low bed, a table, a few chairs, and one or two half-open boxes filled with clothes.
The pale melancholy light streamed in uninterrupted through the curtainless window and lit every crevice of the apartment.
Above the bed was an ikon of the Saviour, very dark and indistinct and adorned with plates of silver; two candles in sticks of violet jasper stood on a shelf beneath this; on the stove was the unfinished model of a ship in wood; these were the only remarkable objects that the room contained.