irritable.
“Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar’s Department has sent for instructions. … From the Consistory, from the Senate, from the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent … asking for information. … What are your orders about the Fire Brigade? From the governor of the prison … from the superintendent of the lunatic asylum …” All night long such announcements were continually being received by the count.
To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating that orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair, carefully prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that that somebody would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that might happen.
“Oh, tell that blockhead,” he said in reply to the question from the Registrar’s Department, “that he should remain to guard his documents. Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They have horses, let them be off to Vladímir, and not leave them to the French.”