would be pleasing for one's wife to know French and German, to speak various languages, very pleasing; but what's the use of that if she can't sew on one's buttons, perhaps? I am a man of the educated class: I am just as much at home, I may say, with Prince Kanitelin as I am with you here now. But my habits are simple, and I want a girl who is not too much a fine lady. Above all, she must have respect for me and feel that I have made her happiness.'
'To be sure.'
'Well, now as regards the essential. . . . I do not want a wealthy bride; I would never condescend to anything so low as to marry for money. I desire not to be kept by my wife, but to keep her, and that she may be sensible of it. But I do not want a poor girl either. Though I am a man of means, and am marrying not from mercenary motives, but from love, yet I cannot take a poor girl, for, as you know yourself, prices have gone up so, and there will be children.'
'One might find one with a dowry,' said the matchmaker.
'A glass of wine, I beg. . . .'
There was a pause of five minutes.
The matchmaker heaved a sigh, took a sidelong glance at the guard, and asked:
'Well, now, my good sir . . . do you want anything in the bachelor line? I have some fine bargains. One is a French girl and one is a Greek. Well worth the money.'
The guard thought a moment and said:
'No, I thank you. In view of your favourable disposition, allow me to enquire now how much you ask for your exertions in regard to a bride?'
'I don't ask much. Give me twenty-five roubles and the stuff for a dress, as is usual, and I will say thank you . . . but for the dowry, that's a different account.'
Stytchkin folded his arms over his chest and fell to pondering in silence. After some thought he heaved a sigh and said:
'That's dear. . . .'
'It's not at all dear, Nikolay Nikolayitch! In old days when there were lots of weddings one did do it cheaper, but nowadays what are our earnings? If you make fifty roubles in a month that is not a fast, you may be thankful. It's not on weddings we make our money, my good sir.'
Stytchkin looked at the matchmaker in amazement and shrugged his shoulders.
'H'm! . . . Do you call fifty roubles little?' he asked.
'Of course it is little! In old days we sometimes made more than a hundred.'
'H'm! I should never have thought it was possible to earn such a sum by these jobs. Fifty roubles! It is not every man that earns as much! Pray drink your wine. . . .'
The matchmaker drained her glass without winking. Stytchkin looked her over from head to foot in silence, then said:
'Fifty roubles. . . . Why, that is six hundred roubles a year. . . . Please take some more. . . With such dividends, you know, Lyubov Grigoryevna, you would have no difficulty in making a match for yourself. . . .'
'For myself,' laughed the matchmaker, 'I am an old woman.'
'Not at all. . . . You have such a figure, and your face is plump and fair, and all the rest of it.'
The matchmaker was embarrassed. Stytchkin was also embarrassed and sat down beside her.
'You are still very attractive,' said he; 'if you met with a practical, steady, careful husband, with his salary and your earnings you might even attract him very much, and you'd get on very well together. . . .'
'Goodness knows what you are saying, Nikolay Nikolayitch.'
'Well, I meant no harm. . . .'
A silence followed. Stytchkin began loudly blowing his nose, while the matchmaker turned crimson, and looking bashfully at him, asked:
'And how much do you get, Nikolay Nikolayitch?'
'I? Seventy-five roubles, besides tips. . . . Apart from that we make something out of candles and hares.'
'You go hunting, then?'
'No. Passengers who travel without tickets are called hares with us.'
Another minute passed in silence. Stytchkin got up and walked about the room in excitement.
'I don't want a young wife,' said he. 'I am a middle-aged man, and I want someone who . . . as it might be like you . . . staid and settled and a figure something like yours. . . .'
'Goodness knows what you are saying . . .' giggled the matchmaker, hiding her crimson face in her kerchief.
'There is no need to be long thinking about it. You are after my own heart, and you suit me in your qualities. I am a practical, sober man, and if you like me . . . what could be better? Allow me to make you a proposal!'
The matchmaker dropped a tear, laughed, and, in token of her consent, clinked glasses with Stytchkin.
'Well,' said the happy railway guard, 'now allow me to explain to you the behaviour and manner of life I desire from you. . . . I am a strict, respectable, practical man. I take a gentlemanly view of everything. And I desire that my wife should be strict also, and should understand that to her I am a benefactor and the foremost person in the world.'
He sat down, and, heaving a deep sigh, began expounding to his bride-elect his views on domestic life and a wife's duties.
NOTES
Magyar: Hungarian
bonds of Hymen: marriage; Hymen was the Greek god of marriage
In the Coach-House
by Anton Chekhov
IT was between nine and ten o'clock in the evening. Stepan the coachman, Mihailo the house-porter, Alyoshka the coachman's grandson, who had come up from the village to stay with his grandfather, and Nikandr, an old man of seventy, who used to come into the yard every evening to sell salt herrings, were sitting round a lantern in the big coach-house, playing 'kings.' Through the wide-open door could be seen the whole yard, the big house, where the master's family lived, the gates, the cellars, and the porter's lodge. It was all shrouded in the darkness of night, and only the four windows of one of the lodges which was let were brightly lit up. The shadows of the coaches and sledges with their shafts tipped upwards stretched from the walls to the doors, quivering and cutting across the shadows cast by the lantern and the players. . . . On the other side of the thin partition that divided the coach-house from the stable were the horses. There was a scent of hay, and a disagreeable smell of salt herrings coming from old Nikandr.
The porter won and was king; he assumed an attitude such as was in his opinion befitting a king, and blew his nose loudly on a red-checked handkerchief.
'Now if I like I can chop off anybody's head,' he said. Alyoshka, a boy of eight with a head of flaxen hair, left long uncut, who had only missed being king by two tricks, looked angrily and with envy at the porter. He pouted and frowned.
'I shall give you the trick, grandfather,' he said, pondering over his cards; 'I know you have got the queen of diamonds.'
'Well, well, little silly, you have thought enough!'
Alyoshka timidly played the knave of diamonds. At that moment a ring was heard from the yard.
'Oh, hang you!' muttered the porter, getting up. 'Go and open the gate, O king!'
When he came back a little later, Alyoshka was already a prince, the fish-hawker a soldier, and the coachman a peasant.
'It's a nasty business,' said the porter, sitting down to the cards again. 'I have just let the doctors out. They have not extracted it.'
'How could they? Just think, they would have to pick open the brains. If there is a bullet in the head, of what
