ook out of his pocket a little roll of IOUs and
laid them with a notebook on the table.

"Nothing betrays a Jew as much as his accent," Susanna went on,
looking gaily at the lieutenant. "However much he twists himself
into a Russian or a Frenchman, ask him to say 'feather' and he will
say 'fedder' . . . but I pronounce it correctly: 'Feather! feather!
feather!'"

Both laughed.

"By Jove, she's very jolly!" thought Sokolsky.

Susanna put the portfolio on a chair, took a step towards the
lieutenant, and bringing her face close to his, went on gaily:

"Next to the Jews I love no people so much as the Russian and the
French. I did not do much at school and I know no history, but it
seems to me that the fate of the world lies in the hands of those
two nations. I lived a long time abroad. . . . I spent six months
in Madrid. . . . I've gazed my fill at the public, and the conclusion
I've come to is that there are no decent peoples except the Russian
and the French. Take the languages, for instance. . . . The German
language is like the neighing of horses; as for the English . . .
you can't imagine anything stupider. Fight--feet--foot! Italian
is only pleasant when they speak it slowly. If you listen to Italians
gabbling, you get the effect of the Jewish jargon. And the Poles?
Mercy on us! There's no language so disgusting! 'Nie pieprz, Pietrze,
pieprzem wieprza bo mozeoz przepieprzye wieprza pieprzem.' That
means: 'Don't pepper a sucking pig with pepper, Pyotr, or perhaps
you'll over-pepper the sucking pig with pepper.' Ha, ha, ha!"

Susanna Moiseyevna rolled her eyes and broke into such a pleasant,
infectious laugh that the lieutenant, looking at her, went off into
a loud and merry peal of laughter. She took the visitor by the
button, and went on:

"You don't like Jews, of course . . . they've many faults, like all
nations. I don't dispute that. But are the Jews to blame for it?
No, it's not the Jews who are to blame, but the Jewish women! They
are narrow-minded, greedy; there's no sort of poetry about them,
they're dull. . . . You have never lived with a Jewess, so you don't
know how charming it is!" Susanna Moiseyevna pronounced the last
words with deliberate emphasis and with no eagerness or laughter.
She paused as though frightened at her own openness, and her face
was suddenly distorted in a strange, unaccountable way. Her eyes
stared at the lieutenant without blinking, her lips parted and
showed clenched teeth