"Right," said Ostap, "let's get moving.
Ippolit Matveyevich, you, I hope, will take advantage of Elena Stanislavovna's hospitality and spend the night here.
It will be a good thing for the conspiracy if we separate for a time, anyway, as a blind.
I'm off."
Ippolit Matveyevich was winking broadly, but Ostap pretended he had not noticed and went out into the street.
Having gone a block, he remembered the five hundred honestly earned roubles in his pocket.
"Cabby! " he cried. "Take me to the Phoenix."
The cabby leisurely drove Ostap to a closed restaurant.
"What's this!
Shut?"
"On account of May Day."
"Damn them!
All the money in the world and nowhere to have a good time.
All right, then, take me to Plekhanov Street.
Do you know it?"
"What was the street called before? " asked the cabby.
"I don't know."
"How can I get there?
I don't know it, either."
Ostap nevertheless ordered him to drive on and find it.
For an hour and a half they cruised around the dark and empty town, asking watchmen and militiamen the way.
One militiaman racked his brains and at length informed them that Plekhanov Street was none other than the former Governor Street.
"Governor Street!
I've been taking people to Governor Street for twenty-five years."
"Then drive there!"
They arrived at Governor Street, but it turned out to be Karl Marx and not Plekhanov Street.
The frustrated Ostap renewed his search for the lost street, but was not able to find it.
Dawn cast a pale light on the face of the moneyed martyr who had been prevented from disporting himself.
"Take me to the Sorbonne Hotel!" he shouted. "A fine driver you are!
You don't even know Plekhanov! "
Widow Gritsatsuyev's palace glittered.
At the head of the banquet table sat the King of Clubs-the son of a Turkish citizen.
He was elegant and drunk.
All the guests were talking loudly.
The young bride was no longer young.
She was at least thirty-five.
Nature had endowed her generously.
She had everything: breasts like watermelons, a bulging nose, brightly coloured cheeks and a powerful neck.
She adored her new husband and was afraid of him.
She did not therefore call him by his first name, or by his patronymic, which she had not managed to find out, anyway, but by his surname-Comrade Bender.
Ippolit Matveyevich was sitting on his cherished chair.
All through the wedding feast he bounced up and down, trying to feel something hard.
From time to time he did.
Whenever this happened, the people present pleased him, and he began shouting "Kiss the bride" furiously.
Ostap kept making speeches and proposing toasts.
They drank to public education and the irrigation of Uzbekistan.
Later on the guests began to depart.
Ippolit Matveyevich lingered in the hall and whispered to Bender:
"Don't waste time, they're there."
"You're a moneygrubber," replied the drunken Ostap. "Wait for me at the hotel.