bitterly. "What is the merchant? Let us investigate this rough
and uncouth phenomenon. First of all, every merchant is a mujik.

He comes from a village, and in course of time becomes a
merchant. In order to be a merchant, one must have money. Where
can the mujik get the money from? It is well known that he does
not get it by honest hard work, and that means that the mujik,
somehow or other, has been swindling. That is to say, a merchant
is simply a dishonest mujik."

"Splendid!" cry the people, approving the orator's deduction, and
Tyapa bellows all the time, scratching his breast. He always
bellows like this as he drinks his first glass of vodki, when he
has a drunken headache. The Captain beams with joy. They next
read the correspondence. This is, for the Captain, "an abundance
of drinks," as he himself calls it. He always notices how the
merchants make this life abominable, and how cleverly they spoil
everything. His speeches thunder at and annihilate merchants.
His audience listens to him with the greatest pleasure, because
he swears atrociously. "If I wrote for the papers," he shouts,
"I would show up the merchant in his true colours . . . I would
show that he is a beast, playing for a time the role of a man.
I understand him! He is a rough boor, does not know the meaning
of the words 'good taste,' has no notion of patriotism, and his
knowledge is not worth five kopecks."

Abyedok, knowing the Captain's weak point, and fond of making
other people angry, cunningly adds:

"Yes, since the nobility began to make acquaintance with hunger,