home. "Put on your hat and coat this minute and come along. One of
our fellows is dead, we are just sending him off to the other world,
so you must do a bit of palavering by way of farewell to him. . . .
You are our only hope. If it had been one of the smaller fry it
would not have been worth troubling you, but you see it's the
secretary . . . a pillar of the office, in a sense. It's awkward
for such a whopper to be buried without a speech."

"Oh, the secretary!" yawned Zapoikin. "You mean the drunken one?"

"Yes. There will be pancakes, a lunch . . . you'll get your cab-fare.
Come along, dear chap. You spout out some rigmarole like a regular
Cicero at the grave and what gratitude you will earn!"

Zapoikin readily agreed. He ruffled up his hair, cast a shade of
melancholy over his face, and went out into the street with Poplavsky.

"I know your secretary," he said, as he got into the cab. "A cunning
rogue and a beast--the kingdom of heaven be his--such as you
don't often come across."

"Come, Grisha, it is not the thing to abuse the dead."

"Of course not, _aut mortuis nihil bene_, but still he was a rascal."

The friends overtook the funeral procession and joined it. The
coffin was borne along slowly so that before they reached the
cemetery they were able three times to drop into a tavern and imbibe
a little to the health of the departed.

In the cemetery came the service by the graveside. The mother-in-law,
the wife, and the sister-in-law in obedience to custom shed many
tears. When the coffin was being lowered into the grave the wife
even shrieked "Let me go with him!" but did not follow her husband
into the grave probably recollecting her pension. Waiting till
everything was quiet again Zapoikin stepped forward, turned his
eyes on all present, and began:

"Can I believe my eyes and ears? Is it not a terrible dream this
grave, these tear-stained faces, these moans and lamentations? Alas,
it is not a dream and our eyes do not deceive us! He whom we have
only so lately seen, so full of courage, so youthfully fresh and
pure, who so lately before our eyes like an unwearying bee bore his
honey to the common hive of the welfare of the state, he who . . .
he is turned now to dust, to inanimate mirage. Inexorable death has
laid his bony hand upon him at the time when, in spite of his bowed
age, he was still full of the bloom of strength and radiant hopes.
An irremediable loss! Who will fill his place for us? Good g