When a dance was struck up and Dounyáshka, advancing with trembling shoulders and bosom, twirled round in front of the Count and floated onwards, Toúrbin leapt up, threw off his jacket, and in his red shirt paced jauntily with her in precise and measured step, accomplishing such things with his legs that the gipsies, smiling with approval, glanced one at another.
The Captain of Police sat down like a Turk, beat his breast with his fist, and cried “Viva!” and then, having caught hold of the Count’s leg, began to tell him that of two thousand roubles he now had only five hundred left, but that he could do anything he liked if only the Count would allow it. The elderly paterfamilias awoke and wished to go away, but was not permitted to do so. The handsome young man began persuading a gipsy to valse with him. The cavalryman, wishing to show off his intimacy with the Count, rose and embraced Toúrbin. “Ah, my dear fellow!” he said, “why didst thou leave us, eh?” The Count was silent, evidently thinking of something else. “Where have you been? Ah, you rogue of a Count, I know where you went to!”
For some reason this familiarity displeased Toúrbin. Without a smile he looked silently into the cavalryman’s face, and suddenly launched at him such terrible and rude abuse that the cavalryman was pained, and for a while could not make up his mind whether to take the offence as a joke or seriously. At last he decided to take it as a joke, smiled, and went back to his gipsy, assuring her that he would certainly marry her after Easter. They sang another song, and another, danced again, and “hailed the guests,” and everyone continued to imagine he was enjoying it. There was no end to the champagne. The Count drank much. His eyes seemed to grow moist, but he was not unsteady. He danced yet better than before, spoke firmly, even joined in the chorus extremely well, and chimed in when Styóshka sang “Friendship’s Tender Emotions.” In the midst of a dance the landlord came in to ask the guests to return to their homes, as it was getting on for three in the morning.