And now maybe you don't need to wait for the secretary, but can go and announce me yourself."
"I can't announce a visitor like you without the secretary, and besides, the general gave me a specific order earlier not to bother him for anyone while he was with the colonel, but Gavrila Ardalionych can go in without being announced."
"A clerk?"
"Gavrila Ardalionych?
No.
He works for the Company on his own.
You can at least put your bundle down here."
"I already thought of that. With your permission.
And, you know, I'll take the cloak off, too."
"Of course, you can't go and see him in your cloak."
The prince stood up, hastily took off his cloak, and remained in a rather decent and smartly tailored, though shabby, jacket.
A steel chain hung across his waistcoat.
The chain turned out to be attached to a silver Swiss watch.
Though the prince was a little fool—the lackey had already decided that—all the same the general's valet finally found it unsuitable to continue his conversation with the visitor, despite the fact that for some reason he liked the prince, in his own way, of course.
But from another point of view, he provoked in him a decided and crude indignation.
"And when does the general's wife receive?" asked the prince, sitting down in his former place.
"That's none of my business, sir.
She receives at various times, depending on the person.
She'd receive the dressmaker even at eleven o'clock.
Gavrila Ardalionych is also admitted earlier than others, even for an early lunch."
"Here it's warmer inside in winter than it is abroad," the prince observed, "but there it's warmer outside than here, while a Russian can't even live in their houses in winter unless he's used to it."
"They don't heat them?"
"No, and the houses are also built differently—the stoves and windows, that is."
"Hm!
Have you been traveling long?"
"Four years.
Though I sat in the same place almost the whole time, in the country."
"You're unaccustomed to things here?"
"That's true, too.
Would you believe, I marvel at myself that I haven't forgotten how to speak Russian.
Here I'm talking to you now and thinking to myself: 'I speak well enough after all.'
That may be why I'm talking so much.
Really, since yesterday all I've wanted to do is speak Russian."
"Hm!
Heh!
And did you live in Petersburg before?" (Try as he might, the lackey could not help keeping up such a courteous and polite conversation.)
"In Petersburg?
Hardly at all, just in passing.
And before I didn't know anything here, but now I've heard so much is new that they say anyone who knew it has to learn to know it all over again.
There's a lot of talk about the courts."
"Hm! . . .
The courts.
The courts, it's true, there's the courts.
And do the courts there judge more fairly or not?"
"I don't know.
I've heard a lot of good about ours.
Then, again, we have no capital punishment."
"And they have it there?"
"Yes.
I saw it in France, in Lyons.