'It's ... it's a pair of scissors?' muttered Kuzma Vassilyevitch.
'Why, of course. What did you think it was ... a pistol? Oh, how funny
you look! You're as rumpled as a pillow and your hair is all standing
up at the back.... And he doesn't laugh.... Oh, oh! And his eyes are
puffy.... Oh!'
Emilie went off into a giggle.
'Come, that's enough,' muttered Kuzma Vassilyevitch, and he got up
from the sofa. 'That's enough giggling about nothing. If you can't
think of anything more sensible, I'll go home.... I'll go home,' he
repeated, seeing that she was still laughing.
Emilie subsided.
'Come, stay; I won't.... Only you must brush your hair.'
'No, never mind.... Don't trouble. I'd better go,' said Kuzma
Vassilyevitch, and he took up his cap.
Emilie pouted.
'Fie, how cross he is! A regular Russian! All Russians are cross. Now
he is going. Fie! Yesterday he promised me five roubles and today he
gives me nothing and goes away.'
'I haven't any money on me,' Kuzma Vassilyevitch muttered grumpily in
the doorway. 'Good-bye.'
Emilie looked after him and shook her finger.
'No money! Do you hear, do you hear what he says? Oh, what deceivers
these Russians are! But wait a bit, you pug.... Auntie, come here, I
have something to tell you.'
That evening as Kuzma Vassilyevitch was undressing to go to bed, he
noticed that the upper edge of his leather belt had come unsewn for
about three inches. Like a careful man he at once procured a needle
and thread, waxed the thread and stitched up the hole himself. He
paid, however, no attention to this apparently trivial circumstance.
XIII
The whole of the next day Kuzma Vassilyevitch devoted to his official
duties; he did not leave the house even after dinner and right into
the night was scribbling and copying out his report to his superior
officer, mercilessly disregarding the rules of spelling, always
putting an exclamation mark after the word
after
gown brought him a letter from Emilie--the first letter that Kuzma
Vassilyevitch had received from her.
'Mein allerliebstep Florestan,' she wrote to him, 'can you really so
cross with your Zuckerpuppchen be that you came not yesterday? Please
be not cross if you wish not your merry Emilie to weep very bitterly
and come, be sure, at 5 o'clock to-day.' (The figure 5 was surrounded
with two wreaths.) 'I will be very, very glad. Your amiable Emilie.'
Kuzma Vassilyevitch was inwardly surprised at the accomplishments of
his charmer, gave the Jew boy a copper coin and told him to say, 'Very
well, I will come.'
XIV
Kuzma Vassilyevitch kept his word: five o'clock had not struck when he
was standing before Madame Fritsche's gate. But to his surprise he did
not find Emilie at home; he was met by the lady of the house herself
who--wonder of wonders!--dropping a preliminary curtsey, informed him
that Emilie had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to go out but
she would soon be back and begged him to wait. Madame Fritsche had on
a neat white cap; she smiled, spoke in an ingratiating voice and
evidently tried to give an affable expression to her morose
countenance, which was, however, none the more prepossessing for that,
but on the contrary acquired a positively sinister aspect.
'Sit down, sit down, sir,' she said, putting an easy chair for him,
'and we will offer you some refreshment if you will permit it.'
