Here I've brought a visitor. Make haste and ring! Let us have coffee--the best coffee--in Saxony cups on a snow-white cloth!'

She threw off her hat and gloves, and clapped her hands.

Polozov looked at her from under his brows.

'What makes you so skittish to-day, Maria Nikolaevna?' he said in an undertone.

'That's no business of yours, Ippolit Sidoritch! Ring! Dimitri Pavlovitch, sit down and have some coffee for the second time. Ah, how nice it is to give orders! There's no pleasure on earth like it!'

'When you're obeyed,' grumbled her husband again.

'Just so, when one's obeyed! That's why I'm so happy! Especially with you. Isn't it so, dumpling? Ah, here's the coffee.'

On the immense tray, which the waiter brought in, there lay also a playbill. Maria Nikolaevna snatched it up at once.

'A drama!' she pronounced with indignation, 'a German drama. No matter; it's better than a German comedy. Order a box for me--baignoire--or no ... better the Fremden-Loge,' she turned to the waiter. 'Do you hear: the Fremden-Loge it must be!'

'But if the Fremden-Loge has been already taken by his excellency, the director of the town (seine Excellenz der Herr Stadt-Director),' the waiter ventured to demur.

'Give his excellency ten thalers, and let the box be mine! Do you hear!'

The waiter bent his head humbly and mournfully.

'Dimitri Pavlovitch, you will go with me to the theatre? the German actors are awful, but you will go ... Yes? Yes? How obliging you are! Dumpling, are you not coming?

'You settle it,' Polozov observed into the cup he had lifted to his lips.

'Do you know what, you stay at home. You always go to sleep at the theatre, and you don't understand much German. I'll tell you what you'd better do, write an answer to the overseer--you remember, about our mill ... about the peasants' grinding. Tell him that I won't have it, and I won't and that's all about it! There's occupation for you for the whole evening.'

'All right,' answered Polozov.

'Well then, that's first-rate. You're a darling. And now, gentlemen, as we have just been speaking of my overseer, let's talk about our great business. Come, directly the waiter has cleared the table, you shall tell me all, Dimitri Pavlovitch, about your estate, what price you will sell it for, how much you want paid down in advance, everything, in fact! (At last, thought Sanin, thank God!) You have told me something about it already, you remember, you described your garden delightfully, but dumpling wasn't here.... Let him hear, he may pick a hole somewhere! I'm delighted to think that I can help you to get married, besides, I promised you that I would go into your business after lunch, and I always keep my promises, isn't that the truth, Ippolit Sidoritch?'

Polozov rubbed his face with his open hand. 'The truth's the truth. You don't deceive any one.'

'Never! and I never will deceive any one. Well, Dimitri Pavlovitch, expound the case as we express it in the senate.'

XXXVII

Sanin proceeded to expound his case, that is to say, again, a second time, to describe his property, not touching this time on the beauties of nature, and now and then appealing to Polozov for confirmation of his 'facts and figures.' But Polozov simply gasped and shook his head, whether in approval or disapproval, it would have puzzled the devil, one might fancy, to decide. However, Maria Nikolaevna stood in no need of his aid. She exhibited commercial and administrative abilities that were really astonishing! She was familiar with all the ins-and-outs of farming; she asked questions about everything with great exactitude, went into every point; every word of hers went straight to the root of the matter, and hit the nail on the head. Sanin had not expected such a close inquiry, he had not prepared himself for it. And this inquiry lasted for fully an hour and a half. Sanin experienced all the sensations of the criminal on his trial, sitting on a narrow bench confronted by a stern and penetrating judge. 'Why, it's a cross-examination!' he murmured to himself dejectedly. Maria Nikolaevna kept laughing all the while, as though it were a joke; but Sanin felt none the more at ease for that; and when in the course of the 'cross-examination' it turned out that he had not clearly realised the exact meaning of the words 'repartition' and 'tilth,' he was in a cold perspiration all over.

'Well, that's all right!' Maria Nikolaevna decided at last. 'I know your estate now ... as well as you do. What price do you suggest per soul?' (At that time, as every one knows, the prices of estates were reckoned by the souls living as serfs on them.)

'Well ...