"I cannot live thus!" he roared at the top of his voice.--"I cannot live
in your lordly, thrice-damned house! I hate, I am ashamed to live so
tranquilly!... How do _you_ manage to endure it?!"

"In other words," I interposed, "thou wishest to say that thou canst not
live without liquor...."

"Well, yes! well, yes!" he yelled again.--"Only let me go to my
brethren, to my friends, to the beggars!... Away from your noble,
decorous, repulsive race!"

I wanted to remind him of his promise on oath, but the criminal
expression of Mísha's face, his unrestrained voice, the convulsive
trembling of all his limbs--all this was so frightful that I made haste
to get rid of him. I informed him that he should receive his clothing at
once, that a cart should be harnessed for him; and taking from a casket
a twenty-ruble bank-note, I laid it on the table. Mísha was already
beginning to advance threateningly upon me, but now he suddenly stopped
short, his face instantaneously became distorted, and flushed up; he
smote his breast, tears gushed from his eyes, and he stammered,
--"Uncle!--Angel! I am a lost man, you see!---Thanks! Thanks!"--He
seized the bank-note and rushed out of the room.

An hour later he was already seated in a cart, again clad in his
Circassian coat, again rosy and jolly; and when the horses started off
he uttered a yell, tore off his tall kazák cap, and waving it above his
head, he made bow after bow. Immediately before his departure he
embraced me long and warmly, stammering:--"Benefactor, benefactor!... It
was impossible to save me!" He even ran in to see the ladies, and kissed