th the local inhabitants. On my honour, _parole d'honneur_, I
don't understand why it is we actors avoid making acquaintance with
local families. Why is it? To say nothing of dinners, name-day
parties, feasts, _soirees fixes_, to say nothing of these entertainments,
think of the moral influence we may have on society! Is it not
agreeable to feel one has dropped a spark in some thick skull? The
types one meets! The women! _Mon Dieu_, what women! they turn one's
head! One penetrates into some huge merchant's house, into the
sacred retreats, and picks out some fresh and rosy little peach--
it's heaven, _parole d'honneur!_"

In the southern town, among other estimable families he made the
acquaintance of that of a manufacturer called Zybaev. Whenever he
remembers that acquaintance now he frowns contemptuously, screws
up his eyes, and nervously plays with his watch-chain.

One day--it was at a name-day party at Zybaev's--the actor was
sitting in his new friends' drawing-room and holding forth as usual.
Around him "types" were sitting in armchairs and on the sofa,
listening affably; from the next room came feminine laughter and
the sounds of evening tea. . . . Crossing his legs, after each
phrase sipping tea with rum in it, and trying to assume an expression
of careless boredom, he talked of his stage triumphs.

"I am a provincial actor principally," he said, smiling condescendingly,
"but I have played in Petersburg and Moscow too. . . . By the way,
I will describe an incident which illustrates pretty well the state
of mind of to-day. At my benefit in Moscow the young people brought
me such a mass of laurel wreaths that I swear by all I hold sacred
I did not know where to put them! _Parole d'honneur!_ Later on, at
a moment when funds were short, I took the laurel wreaths to the
shop, and . . . guess what they weighed. Eighty pounds altogether.
Ha, ha! you can't think how useful the money was. Artists, indeed,
are often hard up. To-day I have hundreds, thousands, tomorrow
nothing. . . . To-day I haven't a crust of bread, to-morrow I have
oysters and anchovies, hang it all!"

The local inhabitants sipped their glasses decorously and listened.
The well-pleased host, not knowing how to make enough of his cultured
and interesting visitor, presented to him a distant relative who
had just arrived, one Pavel Ignatyevitch Klimov, a bulky gentleman
about forty, wearing a long frock-coat and very full trousers.

"You ought to know