unted it, the more discontented he became.

In the evening the evil one brought him a full-bosomed lady in a red
dress, and said that this was his new wife. He spent the whole evening
kissing her and eating gingerbreads, and at night he went to bed on a
soft, downy feather-bed, turned from side to side, and could not go to
sleep. He felt uncanny.

"We have a great deal of money," he said to his wife; "we must look
out or thieves will be breaking in. You had better go and look with a
candle."

He did not sleep all night, and kept getting up to see if his box was
all right. In the morning he had to go to church to matins. In church
the same honor is done to rich and poor alike. When Fyodor was poor he
used to pray in church like this: "God, forgive me, a sinner!" He said
the same thing now though he had become rich. What difference was
there? And after death Fyodor rich would not be buried in gold, not
in diamonds, but in the same black earth as the poorest beggar. Fyodor
would burn in the same fire as cobblers. Fyodor resented all this, and,
too, he felt weighed down all over by his dinner, and instead of prayer
he had all sorts of thoughts in his head about his box of money, about
thieves, about his bartered, ruined soul.

He came out of church in a bad temper. To drive away his unpleasant
thoughts as he had often done before, he struck up a song at the top of
his voice. But as soon as he began a policeman ran up and said, with his
fingers to the peak of his cap:

"Your honor, gentlefolk must not sing in the street! You are not a
shoemaker!"

Fyodor leaned his back against a fence and fell to thinking: what could
he do to amuse himself?

"Your honor," a porter shouted to him, "don't lean against the fence,
you will spoil your fur coat!"

Fyodor went into a shop and bought himself the very best concertina,
then went out into the street playing it. Everybody pointed at him and
laughed.

"And a gentleman, too," the cabmen jeered at him; "like some
cobbler...."

"Is it the proper thing for gentlefolk to be disorderly in the street?"
a policeman said to him. "You had better go into a tavern!"

"Your honor, give us a trifle, for Christ's sake," the beggars wailed,
surrounding Fyodor on all sides.

In earlier days when he was a shoemaker the beggars took no notice of
him, now they wouldn't let him pass.

And at home his new wife, the lady, was waiting for him, dressed in a
green blouse and a red skirt. He mea