"That is perfectly false, Sir! I never saw in the whole course of my life your lieutenant Maksimoff!"
"My dear Sir, allow me to inform you that I am an officer. You may call your servants liars but not me."
Tchichikoff did not wait to hear what Nosdrieff would reply to this observation, but seized his cap, passed stealthily behind the back of the commissary of the military police, and left the room. He was soon seated in his britchka, and ordered Selifan to drive off as fast as his horses could gallop.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
Our hero was still considerably terrified at the thought of his narrow escape. Although the britchka was literally flying at a fearful speed, and Nosdrieff's village nearly lost in the distance, hidden by fields, slopes and hills, yet he still continued to turn round, and cast glances of terror behind him, as if expecting to see suddenly his pursuers.
His breathing was short and interrupted, and when he laid his hand upon his broad breast to feel the beating of his heart, he felt it throbbing like that of a quail in a cage.
"Oh! what a regular shower-bath! How could I ever expect that of the fellow!" Such exclamations were followed by a variety of difficult and strong wishes for the future of Nosdrieff, and were concluded by epithets certainly not of the choicest language.
"Say what I may," Tchichikoff remarked confidentially to himself, "without the sudden appearance of the commissioner of the military police, I might at this present moment be one less among the living in this world! I should have disappeared like a bubble on the ocean, without leaving a trace behind me, no heirs or children to inherit my honourable name, my modest fortune!" Our hero seemed very anxious and concerned about his successors.
"What a nasty gentleman!" thought Selifan. "I have never seen such an ill-disposed man before. He deserves to be despised. I could rather see a man without food, but a horse must be fed because a horse likes oats. That is the proper food for his maintenance. What meat is to us, so is oats to the horse, and that is the proper food for horses."