Loud and fast Flows the Gualdalquivir.
The blinded Ippolit Matveyevich trotted off in the opposite direction, shouting
"Stop! Thief!"
Then he cried for a long time and, still weeping, bought a full basket of bagels from an old woman.
Reaching the Smolensk market, now empty and dark, he walked up and down for some time, throwing the bagels all over the place like a sower sowing seed.
As he went, he shouted in a tuneless voice:
Roaming,
You're always roaming,
Ta-ra-ra-ra . . .
Later on he befriended a taxi-driver, poured out his heart to him, and told him in a muddled way about the jewels.
"A gay old gentleman," exclaimed the taxi-driver.
Ippolit Matveyevich was really in a gay mood, but the gaiety was clearly of a rather reprehensible nature, because he woke up at about eleven the next day in the local police-station.
Of the two hundred roubles with which he had shamefully begun his night of enjoyment and debauchery, only twelve remained.
He felt like death.
His spine ached, his liver hurt, and his head felt as if he had a lead pot on top of it.
But the most awful thing was that he could not remember how and where he could have spent so much money. On the way home he had to stop at the optician's to have new lenses fitted in his pince-nez.
Ostap looked in surprise at the bedraggled figure of Ippolit Matveyevich for some time but said nothing.
He was cold and ready for battle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
PUNISHMENT
The auction was due to begin at five o'clock.
Citizens were allowed in to inspect the lots at four.
The friends arrived at three o'clock and spent a whole hour looking at a machine-building exhibition next door.
"It looks as though by tomorrow," said Ostap, "given good will on both sides, we ought to be able to buy that little locomotive.
A pity there's no price tag on it.
It's nice to own your own locomotive."
Ippolit Matveyevich was in a highly nervous state.
The chairs alone could console him.
He did not leave them until the moment the auctioneer, in check trousers and a beard reaching to his Russian covert-coat tunic, mounted the stand.
The concessionaires took their places in the fourth row on the right.
Ippolit Matveyevich began to get very excited.
He thought the chairs would be sold at once, but they were actually the third item on the list, and first came the usual auction junk: odd pieces of dinner services embellished with coats of arms; a sauce dish; a silver glass-holder; a Petunin landscape; a bead handbag; a brand-new primus burner; a small bust of Napoleon; linen brassieres; a tapestry
"Hunter shooting wild duck", and other trash.
They had to be patient and wait.
It was hard to wait when the chairs were all there; their goal was within reach.
"What a rumpus there'd be," thought Ostap, "if they knew what little goodies were being sold here today in the form of those chairs."
"A figure depicting Justice!" announced the auctioneer. "Made of bronze.
In perfect condition.
Five roubles.
Who'll bid more?
Six and a half on the right. Seven at the end.
Eight roubles in front in the first row.
Going for eight roubles.
Going.
Gone to the first row in front."
A girl with a receipt book immediately hurried over to the citizen in the first row.
The auctioneer's hammer rose and fell.
He sold an ash-tray, some crystal glass and a porcelain powder bowl.
Time dragged painfully.
"A bronze bust of Alexander the Third.