clumsily, altogether like a cadet
before a quarrel, grumbled out Petrov in a bass.

The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to the
cadets, and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and having
made a touching grimace, began to patter:

"Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to
speak, of the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you not
lend to a little old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous regions,
one good old cigarette? I be poor. Omnia mea mecum porto. But I do
adore the weed."

And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got into
a free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent right leg,
put his hand to his side, and began to sing in a wizened falsetto:

"It used to be that I gave dinners,
In rivers flowed the champagne wine;
But now I have not even bread crusts,
Nor for a split, oh brother mine.

It used to be--in the Saratov
The doorman rushed, and was so fine;
But now all drive me in the neck,
Give for a split, oh brother mine."

"Gentlemen!" suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting short
his singing and smiting himself on the chest. "Here I behold you, and
know that you are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko; but I, too,
in a certain respect, am a military hound. In my time, when I was
studying for a forest ranger, all our department of woods and forests
was military; and for that reason, knocking at the diamond-studded,
golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you--donate toward the raising
for an ensign of taxation of a wee measure of spiritus vini, which same
is taken of the monks also."

"Roly!" cried the stout Kitty from the other end, "show the young
officers the lightning; or else, look you, you're taking the money only
for nothing, you good-for-nothing camel."

"Right away!" merrily responded Roly-Poly. "Most illustrious
benefactors, turn your attention this way. Living Pictures. Thunder
Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the unrecognized
dramaturgist who concealed himself under the pseudonym of Roly-Poly.
The first picture.

"'It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun
illumined the blossoming meadows and environs ...'"

Roly-Poly's Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish smile;
and the eyes narrowed into half-circles.

"'... But now in the distance the first clouds have appeared upon the
horizon. They grew, pile