lines, sung with absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The song ends with a merchant:
The merchant came to try the girls: Would they love him, would they not?
And it appears that he wins their love because:
The merchant will make gold for me And his queen I’ll gladly be.
Kalganov was positively indignant.
“That’s just a song of yesterday,” he said aloud. “Who writes such things for them? They might just as well have had a railwayman or a Jew come to try his luck with the girls; they’d have carried all before them.”
And, almost as though it were a personal affront, he declared, on the spot, that he was bored, sat down on the sofa and immediately fell asleep.
His pretty little face looked rather pale, as it fell back on the sofa cushion.