It's a sacred cause!"
"We'll be wearing cambric footcloths and eating Margo cream."
"I have a hunch the jewels are in that very chair."
"Oh, you have a hunch, do you.
What other hunches do you have?
None?
All right.
Let's work the Marxist way.
We'll leave the sky to the birds and deal with the chairs ourselves.
I can't wait to meet the imperialist war invalid, citizen Gritsatsuyev, at 15 Plekhanov Street.
Don't lag behind, Konrad Karlovich.
We'll plan as we go."
As they passed Father Theodore's door the vengeful son of a Turkish citizen gave it a kick.
There was a low snarling from the harassed rival inside.
"Don't let him follow us!" said Ippolit Matveyevich in alarm.
"After today's meeting of the foreign ministers aboard the yacht no rapprochement is possible.
He's afraid of me."
The friends did not return till evening.
Ippolit Matveyevich looked worried.
Ostap was beaming.
He was wearing new raspberry-coloured shoes with round rubber heel taps, green-and-black check socks, a cream cap, and a silk-mixture scarf of a brightly coloured Rumanian shade.
"It's there all right," said Vorobyaninov, reflecting on his visit to Widow Gritsatsuyev, "but how are we going to get hold of it?
By buying it?"
"Certainly not!" said Ostap. "Besides being a totally unproductive expense, that would start rumours.
Why one chair, and why that chair in particular?"
"What shall we do?"
Ostap lovingly inspected the heels of his new shoes.
"Chic moderne" he said. "What shall we do?
Don't worry, Judge, I'll take on the operation myself.
No chair can withstand these shoes."
Ippolit Matveyevich brightened up. "You know, while you were talking to Mrs. Gritsatsuyev about the flood, I sat down on our chair and I honestly felt something hard underneath me.
They're there, I'll swear to it. They're there, I know it."
"Don't get excited, citizen Michelson."
"We must steal it during the night; honestly, we must steal it!"
"For a marshal of the nobility your methods are too crude.
Anyway, do you know the technique?
Maybe you have a travelling kit with a set of skeleton keys.
Get rid of the idea.
It's a scummy trick to rob a poor widow."
Ippolit Matveyevich pulled himself together.
"It's just that we must act quickly," he said imploringly.
"Only cats are born quickly," said Ostap instructively. "I'll marry her."
"Who?"
"Madame Gritsatsuyev."
"Why?"
"So that we can rummage inside the chair quietly and without any fuss."
"But you'll tie yourself down for life!"
"The things we do for the concession!"
"For life!" said Ippolit Matveyevich in a whisper. He threw up his hands in amazement.
His pastor-like face was bristly and his bluish teeth showed they had not been cleaned since the day he left the town of N.