During the meal the Frenchman was in great feather: he was
discursive and pompous to every one. In Moscow too, I
remembered, he had blown a great many bubbles. Interminably he
discoursed on finance and Russian politics, and though, at
times, the General made feints to contradict him, he did so
humbly, and as though wishing not wholly to lose sight of his
own dignity.

For myself, I was in a curious frame of mind. Even before
luncheon was half finished I had asked myself the old, eternal
question: "WHY do I continue to dance attendance upon the
General, instead of having left him and his family long ago?"
Every now and then I would glance at Polina Alexandrovna, but
she paid me no attention; until eventually I became so irritated
that I decided to play the boor.

First of all I suddenly, and for no reason whatever, plunged
loudly and gratuitously into the general conversation. Above
everything I wanted to pick a quarrel with the Frenchman; and,
with that end in view I turned to the General, and exclaimed in
an overbearing sort of way--indeed, I think that I actually
interrupted him--that that summer it had been almost impossible
for a Russian to dine anywhere at tables d'hote. The General
bent upon me a glance of astonishment.

"If one is a man of self-respect," I went on, "one risks abuse
by so doing, and is forced to put up with insults of every kind.
Both at Paris and on the Rhine, and even in Switzerland--there
are so many Poles, with their sympathisers, the French, at these