“I beg to inform you, Alexandr Petrovitch, that I was very handsome and that the wenches were awfully fond of me⁠ ⁠…” Varlamov began suddenly, apropos of nothing.

“He’s lying! He’s lying again!” Bulkin broke in with a squeal. The convicts laughed.

“And didn’t I swell it among them! I’d a red shirt and velveteen breeches; I lay at my ease like that Count Bottle, that is, as drunk as a Swede; anything I liked in fact!”

“That’s a lie!” Bulkin protested stoutly.

“And in those days I had a stone house of two storeys that had been my father’s. In two years I got through the two storeys, I’d nothing but the gate left and no gate posts. Well, money is like pigeons that come and go.”

“That’s a lie,” Bulkin repeated more stoutly than ever.