His servant interposed—
"Didn't I tell you, sir, not to open the door?"
"But they were pulling out his beard."
"It was only stuck on," confessed Zsabakoff, with a grin.
"And the two men who were laying their sticks about you?"
"Are my two brothers-in-law. That was all a pre-arranged thing. I knew that you were too much a gentleman to see a man ill-treated before your very door. There seemed no other way of getting at you."
Pushkin saw that he had been thoroughly sold, and that it was best to put a good face on it.
"Well, and what's your business?"
"Only humbly to ask you, sir, to pay this miserable one thousand rubles. You know how long they have been owing."