of good birth in straitened circumstances. The expression of his face at
the time in question was grave and thoughtful, as though he were thinking
of matters weightier to his happiness, if not more necessary to his
material welfare than his work. He saw his fingers moving, he watched each
honey-coloured bundle of cut leaf as it was rolled in the parchment
tongue, and with unswerving regularity he made the motions required to
slip the tobacco into the shell. But, while seeing all that he did, and
seeing consciously, he looked as though he saw also through the familiar
materials shaped under his fingers, into a dim distance full of a larger
life and wider interests.

The five occupants of the workshop had been working in silence for nearly
half an hour. The two girls on the one side and the two men on the other
kept their eyes bent down upon their fingers, while Johann Schmidt, the
Cossack, plied his guillotine-like knife in the corner. This same Johann
Schmidt, whose real name, to judge from his appearance, might have been
Tarass Bulba or Danjelo Buralbash, and was probably of a similar sound,
was at once the wit, the spendthrift and the humanitarian of the
Fischelowitz manufactory, possessing a number of good qualities in such
abundant measure as to make him a total failure in everything except the
cutting of tobacco. Like many witty, generous and kind-hearted persons in
a much higher rank of existence, he was cursed with a total want of tact.
On the present occasion, having sliced through an unusually long package
of leaves and having encountered an exceptional number of obstacles in
doing so, he thought fit to pause, draw a long breath and wipe the
perspiration from his sallow forehead with a pocket-handkerchief in which
the neutral tints predominated. This operation, preparatory to a rest of
ten minutes, having been successfully accomplished, Tarass Bulba Schmidt
picked up a tiny oblong bit of paper which had found its way to his feet
from one of the girls' tables, took a pinch of the freshly cut tobacco