hurriedly left the shop
with the parcel containing the broken doll. What he most desired for the
moment was to withdraw himself from the storm of Akulina's abuse, seeing
that he had no means of checking the torrent, nor of exacting satisfaction
for the insults received. However he might have acted had the aggressor
been a man, he was powerless when attacked by a woman, and he was aware
that he had followed the only course which had in it anything of dignity
and self-respect. To stand and bandy words and epithets of abuse would
have been worse than useless, to treat the tobacconist like a gentleman
and to hold him responsible for his wife's language would have been more
than absurd. So the Count took the remains of the puppet and went on his
way.

He was not, however, so superior to good and bad treatment as not to feel
deeply wounded and thoroughly roused to anger. Perhaps, if he had been
already in possession of the fortune and dignity which he expected on the
morrow, he might have smiled contemptuously at the virago's noisy wrath,
feeling nothing and caring even less what she felt towards him. But he had
too long been poor and wretched to bear with equanimity any reference to
his wretchedness or his poverty, and he was too painfully conscious of the
weight of outward circumstances in determining men's judgments of their
fellows not to be stung by the words that had been so angrily applied to
him. Moreover, and worst of all, there was the fact that Fischelowitz had
really lent the money to a poor countryman who had previously made the
acquaintance of the Count, and had by that means induced the tobacconist
to help him. It was true, indeed, that the poor Count had himself lent the
fellow all he had in his pocket, which meant all that he had in the world,
and had been half starved in consequence during a whole week. The man was
an idle vagabond of the worst type, with a pitiful tale of woe well worded
and logically put together, out of which he made a good livelihood.
Nature, as though to favour his designs, had given him a face which
excited sympathy, and he had the wit to cover his eyes, his own tell-tale
feature, with coloured glasses. He had cheated several scores of persons
in the Slav colony of Munich, and had then gone in search of other
pastures. How he had obtained possession of the Wiener Gigerl was a
mystery as yet unsolved. It had certainly seemed odd in the tobacconist's
opinion that a man of such outward app