“And I am going to give you fifty gülden apiece. There they are.”

Potapitch and Martha rushed towards her to kiss her hand.

“And to each bearer also I will give a ten-gülden piece. Let them have it out of the gold, Alexis Ivanovitch. But why is this footman bowing to me, and that other man as well? Are they congratulating me? Well, let them have ten gülden apiece.”

“ Madame la princesse⁠—Un pauvre expatrié⁠—Malheur continuel⁠—Les princes russes sont si généreux! ” said a man who for some time past had been hanging around the old lady’s chair⁠—a personage who, dressed in a shabby frockcoat and coloured waistcoat, kept taking off his cap, and smiling pathetically.