ool and a scoundrel. . . . No better than a fool. If I asked
him for a loan without security--why, a child could see that he
runs no risk whatever. He doesn't understand, the ass! For ten
thousand he would have got a hundred. In a year he would have another
hundred thousand. I asked, I talked . . . but he wouldn't give it
me, the blockhead."

"I hope you did not ask him for a loan in my name."

"H'm. . . . A queer question. . . ." _Mari d'elle_ is offended.
"Anyway he would sooner give me ten thousand than you. You are a
woman, and I am a man anyway, a business-like person. And what a
scheme I propose to him! Not a bubble, not some chimera, but a sound
thing, substantial! If one could hit on a man who would understand,
one might get twenty thousand for the idea alone! Even you would
understand if I were to tell you about it. Only you . . . don't
chatter about it . . . not a word . . . but I fancy I have talked
to you about it already. Have I talked to you about sausage-skins?"

"M'm . . . by and by."

"I believe I have. . . . Do you see the point of it? Now the provision
shops and the sausage-makers get their sausage-skins locally, and
pay a high price for them. Well, but if one were to bring sausage-skins
from the Caucasus where they are worth nothing, and where they are
thrown away, then . . . where do you suppose the sausage-makers
would buy their skins, here in the slaughterhouses or from me? From
me, of course! Why, I shall sell them ten times as cheap! Now let
us look at it like this: every year in Petersburg and Moscow and
in other centres these same skins would be bought to the . . . to
the sum of five hundred thousand, let us suppose. That's the minimum.
Well, and if. . . ."

"You can tell me to-morrow . . . later on. . . ."

"Yes, that's true. You are sleepy, _pardon_, I am just going . . .
say what you like, but with capital you can do good business
everywhere, wherever you go. . . . With capital even out of cigarette
ends one may make a million. . . . Take your theatrical business
now. Why, for example, did Lentovsky come to grief? It's very simple.
He did not go the right way to work from the very first. He had no
capital and he went headlong to the dogs. . . . He ought first to
have secured his capital, and then to have gone slowly and cautiously
. . . . Nowadays, one can easily make money by a theatre, whether it
is a private one or a people's one. . . . If one produces the right
plays, charges a