“Be off, I tell you! You’ve smashed all the doors here! Get along with you!”
The lad reluctantly lounged up the stairs, but instead of going away, sat down on the top step.
“I should like to hear,” said one of the officers, “what had become of your apothecary.”
The narrator drank some lemonade, wiped his beard and moustache, and continued—
“The apothecary? He was in a bad way. The poor fellow was tearing along the post-road with express horses. They rushed him along like mad, and he didn’t know himself what for! ‘What it was all about,’ said he, ‘I can’t make out. I can’t understand anything about it.’ Those are the very words he said to me afterwards.... ‘When I got to Moscow,’ said he, ‘I went and took lodgings, and settled my business, and bought some things, and made the pills’; but something or other kept him, so that he couldn’t come to the tavern to meet me. He missed seeing me, and he hadn’t got my address; so he packed up the box of pills, and wrote my name on the packet, thinking he’d send them off next day. Just as he had finished doing that—it was in the evening time—one of his friends came in and said—
“‘Let’s go and hear the harp-playing girls outside the town.’
“‘All right.’
“So they took a drozhki, and off they went. Well, of course they took some of these sewing-girls with them for company, as any bachelors would.... So they drank, and larked about, and enjoyed themselves; and my apothecary came home as drunk as a lord. As soon as he got in, he just threw himself down on his bed and snored. All of a sudden some one began banging and hammering at the door as hard as they could; and as tight as he was, it woke him up. Well, he woke up and opened the door; and in came that very same Mediterranean squadron.[[54]]
“‘Come with us, please.’
“‘Where to?’