poiling somebody's appetite"; that in spite of these
intrigues the Kulikin school held the foremost place in the whole
province not only from a moral, but also from a material point of
view."

"Everywhere else," he said, "schoolmasters get two hundred or three
hundred roubles, while I get five hundred, and moreover my house
has been redecorated and even furnished at the expense of the firm.
And this year all the walls have been repapered. . . ."

Further the schoolmaster enlarged on the liberality with which the
pupils were provided with writing materials in the factory schools
as compared with the Zemstvo and Government schools. And for all
this the school was indebted, in his opinion, not to the heads of
the firm, who lived abroad and scarcely knew of its existence, but
to a man who, in spite of his German origin and Lutheran faith, was
a Russian at heart.

Sysoev spoke at length, with pauses to get his breath and with
pretensions to rhetoric, and his speech was boring and unpleasant.
He several times referred to certain enemies of his, tried to drop
hints, repeated himself, coughed, and flourished his fingers
unbecomingly. At last he was exhausted and in a perspiration and
he began talking jerkily, in a low voice as though to himself, and
finished his speech not quite coherently: "And so I propose the
health of Bruni, that is Adolf Andreyitch, who is here, among us
. . . generally speaking . . . you understand . . ."

When he finished everyone gave a faint sigh, as though someone had
sprinkled cold water and cleared the air. Bruni alone apparently
had no unpleasant feeling. Beaming and rolling his sentimental eyes,
the German shook Sysoev's hand with feeling and was again as friendly
as a dog.

"Oh, I thank you," he said, with an emphasis on the _oh_, laying
his left hand on his heart. "I am very happy that you understand
me! I, with my whole heart, wish you all things good. But I ought
only to observe; you exaggerate my importance. The school owes its
flourishing condition only to you, my honoured friend, Fyodor
Lukitch. But for you it would be in no way distinguished from other
schools! You think the German is paying a compliment, the German
is saying something polite. Ha-ha! No, my dear Fyodor Lukitch, I
am an honest man and never make complimentary speeches. If we pay
you five hundred roubles a year it is because you are valued by us.
Isn't that so? Gentlemen, what I say is true, isn't it? We should
not p