legs and can use them to stand on. I don't need your bed.

KHLESTAKOV [walking up and down the room]. Go see if there isn't some
tobacco in the pouch.

OSIP. What tobacco? You emptied it out four days ago.

KHLESTAKOV [pacing the room and twisting his lips. Finally he says in a
loud resolute voice]. Listen--a--Osip.

OSIP. Yes, sir?

KHLESTAKOV [In a voice just as loud, but not quite so resolute]. Go down
there.

OSIP. Where?

KHLESTAKOV [in a voice not at all resolute, nor loud, but almost in
entreaty]. Down to the restaurant--tell them--to send up dinner.

OSIP. No, I won't.

KHLESTAKOV. How dare you, you fool!

OSIP. It won't do any good, anyhow. The landlord said he won't let you
have anything more to eat.

KHLESTAKOV. How dare he! What nonsense is this?

OSIP. He'll go to the Governor, too, he says. It's two weeks now since
you've paid him, he says. You and your master are cheats, he says, and
your master is a blackleg besides, he says. We know the breed. We've
seen swindlers like him before.

KHLESTAKOV. And you're delighted, I suppose, to repeat all this to me,
you donkey.

OSIP. "Every Tom, Dick and Harry comes and lives here," he says, "and
runs up debts so that you can't even put him out. I'm not going to fool
about it," he says, "I'm going straight to the Governor and have him
arrested and put in jail."

KHLESTAKOV. That'll do now, you fool. Go down at once and tell him to
have dinner sent up. The coarse brute! The idea!

OSIP. Hadn't I better call the landlord here?

KHLESTAKOV. What do I want the landlord for? Go and tell him yourself.

OSIP. But really, master--

KHLESTAKOV. Well, go, the deuce take you. Call the landlord.

Osip goes out.

SCENE III

KHLESTAKOV [alone]. I am so ravenously hungry. I took a little stroll
thinking I could walk off my appetite. But, hang it, it clings. If I
hadn't dissipated so in Penza I'd have had enough money to get home
with. The infantry captain did me up all right. Wonderful the way the
scoundrel cut the cards! It didn't take more than a quarter of an hour
for him to clean me out of my last penny. And yet I would give
anything to have another set-to with him. Only I never will have the
chance.--What a rotten town this is! You can't get anything on credit in
the grocery shops here. It's deucedly mean, it is. [He whistles, first
an air from Robert le Diable, then a popular song, then a blend of the
two.] No one's coming.

SCENE IV