The friends got up and walked in silence along the sea-front. When
they reached the boulevard, they stopped and shook hands at parting.

"You are awfully spoilt, my friend!" Samoylenko sighed. "Fate has
sent you a young, beautiful, cultured woman, and you refuse the
gift, while if God were to give me a crooked old woman, how pleased
I should be if only she were kind and affectionate! I would live
with her in my vineyard and . . ."

Samoylenko caught himself up and said:

"And she might get the samovar ready for me there, the old hag."

After parting with Laevsky he walked along the boulevard. When,
bulky and majestic, with a stern expression on his face, he walked
along the boulevard in his snow-white tunic and superbly polished
boots, squaring his chest, decorated with the Vladimir cross on a
ribbon, he was very much pleased with himself, and it seemed as
though the whole world were looking at him with pleasure. Without
turning his head, he looked to each side and thought that the
boulevard was extremely well laid out; that the young cypress-trees,
the eucalyptuses, and the ugly, anemic palm-trees were very handsome
and would in time give abundant shade; that the Circassians were
an honest and hospitable people.

"It's strange that Laevsky does not like the Caucasus," he thought,
"very strange."

Five soldiers, carrying rifles, met him and saluted him. On the