w about your taking greyhound pups as
bribes? Why don't you trust in God? You never go to church. I
am firm in the faith, at all events, and go to church every
Sunday. But you--oh, I know you! If you begin to talk about the
creation, one's hair rises straight up on his head.

JUDGE.--It came of itself, of its own accord.

CHIEF.--Well, in some cases, it is worse to have brains than to
be entirely without them. As for you, Luka Luk'itch, as
superintendent of schools, you must bestir yourself with regard
to the teachers. One of them, for instance, the fat-faced
one--I don't recall his name--cannot get along without making
grimaces when he takes his seat--like this (_makes a grimace_);
and then he begins to smooth his beard out from under his
neckerchief with his hand. In short, if he makes such faces at
the scholars, there is nothing to be said; it must be
necessary; I am no judge as to that. But just consider--if he
were to do that to a visitor, it might be very unpleasant; the
Inspector, or anyone else, might take it as personal. The Devil
knows what might come of it.... And I must also mention the
teacher of history. He's a learned man, that's plain; but he
expresses himself with so much warmth that he loses control of
himself. I heard him once; well, so long as he was talking
about the Assyrians and the Babylonians, it was all right; but
when he got to Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe to you
what came over him. I thought there was a fire, by heavens! He
jumped up from his seat, and dashed his chair down against the
floor with all his might. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, no
doubt; but why smash the chairs?([21]) There will be a deficit
in the accounts, just as the result of that.

SUPERINTENDENT.--Yes, he is hasty! I have spoken to him about
it several times. He says: "What would you have? I would
sacrifice my life for science."

CHIEF.--Yes, such is the incomprehensible decree of Fate; a
learned man is always a drunkard, or else he makes faces that
would scare the very saints.

As the play proceeds in this lively vein, two men about town--in a
humble way--the public busybodies, happen to discover at the Inn a
traveler who has been living on credit for two weeks, and going nowhere.
The landlord is on the point of putting the man in priso