He’s got on moustaches and a wig! Here he’s brought a red handkerchief out of his pocket, he is fanning himself with it, he is acting a gentleman⁠—for all the world as though he were a gentleman!” And all were in raptures. “The benevolent country gentleman” came on in an adjutant’s uniform, a very old one, it’s true, in epaulettes and a cap with a cockade, and made an extraordinary sensation. There were two competitors for the part, and, would you believe it, they quarrelled like little children as to which should play it: both were eager to appear in an adjutant’s uniform with shoulder knots. The other actors parted them, and by a majority of votes gave the part to Netsvetaev, not because he was better looking and more presentable than the other and so looked more like a gentleman, but because Netsvetaev assured them that he would come on with a cane and would wave it about and draw patterns on the ground with it like a real gentleman and tiptop swell, which Vanka Otpety could not do, for he had never seen any real gentlemen. And, indeed, when Netsvetaev came on the stage with his lady, he kept on rapidly drawing patterns on the floor with a thin reedy cane which he had picked up somewhere, no doubt considering this a sign of the highest breeding, foppishness and fashion.