Zakhár smiled. “He asked me what rank you were, and if you had had important acquaintances, and how many souls of peasantry you had.”
“Very good: but now we must send and find him; and henceforth don’t give him anything to drink, otherwise you’ll do him more harm than good.”
“That is true,” said Zakhár in assent. “He doesn’t seem in very robust health: we used to have an overseer who, like him …”
Delesof, who had already long ago heard the story of the drunken overseer, did not give Zakhár time to finish, but bade him make everything ready for the night, and then go out and bring the musician back.
He threw himself down on his bed, and put out the candle; but it was long before he fell asleep, for thinking about Albert.
“This may seem strange to some of my friends,” said Delesof to himself, “but how seldom it is that I can do anything for anyone beside myself! and I ought to thank God for a chance when one presents itself. I will not send him away. I will do everything, at least everything that I can, to help him. Maybe he is not absolutely crazy, but only inclined to get drunk. It certainly will not cost me very much. Where one is, there is always enough to satisfy two. Let him live with me awhile, and then we will find him a place, or get him up a concert; we’ll help him off the shoals, and then there will be time enough to see what will come of it.” An agreeable sense of self-satisfaction came over him after making this resolution.
“Certainly I am not a bad man: I might say I am far from being a bad man,” he thought. “I might go so far as to say that I am a good man, when I compare myself with others.”