d thing sticks! And to make it worse
my wife was overtaken with a passion for luxury. Getting into a
sack of gold after poverty, she took to flinging it in all directions.
She went quite off her head, and was so carried away that she used
to get through twenty thousand every month. And I am a distrustful
man. I don't believe in anyone, I suspect everybody. And the more
friendly you are to me the greater my torment. I keep fancying I
am being flattered for my money. I trust no one! I am a difficult
man, my boy, very difficult!"

Frolov emptied his glass at one gulp and went on.

"But that's all nonsense," he said. "One never ought to speak of
it. It's stupid. I am tipsy and I have been chattering, and now you
are looking at me with lawyer's eyes--glad you know some one
else's secret. Well, well! . . . Let us drop this conversation. Let
us drink! I say," he said, addressing a waiter, "is Mustafa here?
Fetch him in!"

Shortly afterwards there walked into the room a little Tatar boy,
aged about twelve, wearing a dress coat and white gloves.

"Come here!" Frolov said to him. "Explain to us the following fact:
there was a time when you Tatars conquered us and took tribute from
us, but now you serve us as waiters and sell dressing-gowns. How
do you explain such a change?"

Mustafa raised his eyebrows and said in a shrill voice, with a
sing-song intonation: "The mutability of destiny!"

Almer looked at his grave face and went off into peals of laughter.

"Well, give him a rouble!" said Frolov. "He is making his fortune
out of the mutability of destiny. He is only kept here for the sake
of those two words. Drink, Mustafa! You will make a gre-eat rascal!
I mean it is awful how many of your sort are toadies hanging about
rich men. The number of these peaceful bandits and robbers is beyond
all reckoning! Shouldn't we send for the gypsies now? Eh? Fetch the
gypsies along!"

The gypsies, who had been hanging about wearily in the corridors
for a long time, burst with whoops into the room, and a wild orgy
began.

"Drink!" Frolov shouted to them. "Drink! Seed of Pharaoh! Sing!
A-a-ah!"

"In the winter time . . . o-o-ho! . . . the sledge was flying . . ."

The gypsies sang, whistled, danced. In the frenzy which sometimes
takes possession of spoilt and very wealthy men, "broad natures,"
Frolov began to play the fool. He ordered supper and champagne for
the gypsies, broke the shade of the electric light, shied bottles
at th