'Intercede for me.... I'm not like a stranger any way... I'm accused...
well, the fact is, I may be left without bread to eat, and you, too.'

'But how can I go to him? How can I disturb him?'

'What next! You have a right to disturb him!'

'What right, Ivan Demianitch?'

'Come, no humbug.... He cannot refuse you, for many reasons. Do you mean
to tell me you don't understand that?'

He looked insolently into my eyes, and I felt my cheeks simply burning.
Hatred, contempt, rose up within me, surged in a rush upon me, drowning
me.

'Yes, I understand you, Ivan Demianitch,' I answered at last--my own
voice seemed strange to me--'and I am not going to Ivan Matveitch, and I
will not ask him for anything. Bread, or no bread!'

Mr. Ratsch shivered, ground his teeth, and clenched his fists.

'All right, wait a bit, your highness!' he muttered huskily. 'I won't
forget it!' That same day, Ivan Matveitch sent for him, and, I was told,
shook his cane at him, the very cane which he had once exchanged with
the Due de la Rochefoucauld, and cried, 'You be a scoundrel and
extortioner! I put you outside!' Ivan Matveitch could hardly speak
Russian at all, and despised our 'coarse jargon,' _ce jargon vulgaire
et rude_. Some one once said before him, 'That same's self-understood.'