“Very queer questions. … They ask, can jealousy exist where there is no love. … What?” he asked, turning round and glancing at us all.
“Dear me!” said Bolhov, with a smile.
“Yes, you know, it is nice in Russia,” continued the Major, just as if his sentences flowed naturally from one another. “When I was in Tambov in ’52, they received me everywhere as if I had been some emperor’s aide-de-camp. Will you believe it, that at a ball at the Governor’s, when I came in, you know … well, they received me very well. The General’s wife herself, you know, talked to me, and asked me about the Caucasus, and everybody was … so that I hardly knew. … They examined my gold sabre as if it were some curiosity; they asked for what I had received the sabre, for what the Ann, for what the Vladimir … so I just told them. … What? That’s what the Caucasus is good for, Nicholas Fedorovich!” he continued, without waiting for any reply:—“There they think very well of us Caucasians. You know a young man that’s a staff-officer and has an Ann and a Vladimir … that counts for a good deal in Russia. … What?”
“And you, no doubt, piled it on a bit, Abram Ilyich?” said Bolhov.
“He—he!” laughed the Major, stupidly. “You know one has to do that. And didn’t I feed well those two months!”
“And tell me, is it nice there in Russia?” said Trosenko, inquiring about Russia as though it were China or Japan.
“Yes, and the champagne we drank those two months, it was awful!”
“Eh, nonsense! You’ll have drunk nothing but lemonade. There now, I’d have burst to let them see how Caucasians drink. I’d have given them something to talk about. I’d have shown them how one drinks; eh, Bolhov?” said Trosenko.
“But you, Daddy, have been more than ten years in the Caucasus,” said Bolhov, “and you remember what Ermolov said? … And Abram Ilyich