I really wanted to lose. I allowed him forty points in advance. He stood fifty-two to my thirty-six. He began to cut the yellow one, and missed eighteen points; and I was standing just at the turning-point. I made a stroke so as to knock the ball off of the billiard-table. No--so luck would have it. Do what I might, he even missed the doublet. I had won again. "Listen," says he. "Peter,"--he did not call me _Petrushka_ then,--"I can't pay you the whole right away. In a couple of months I could pay three thousand even, if it were necessary." And there he stood just as red, and his voice kind of trembled. "Very good, sir," says I. With this he laid down the cue. Then he began to walk up and down, up and down, the perspiration running down his face. "Peter," says he, "let's try it again, double or quit." And he almost burst into tears. "What, sir, what! would you play against such luck?" "Oh, let us play, I beg of you." And he brings the cue, and puts it in my hand. I took the cue, and I threw the balls on the table so that they bounced over on to the floor; I could not help showing off a little, naturally. I say, "All right, sir." But he was in such a hurry that he went and picked up the balls himself, and I thinks to myself, "Anyway, I'll never be able to get the seven hundred rubles from him, so I can lose them to him all the same." I began to play carelessly on purpose. But no--he won't have it so. "Why," says he, "you are playing badly on purpose." But his hands trembled, and when the ball went towards a pocket, his fingers would spread out and his mouth would screw up to one side, as if he could by any means force the ball into the pocket. Even I couldn't stand it, and I say, "That won't do any good, sir." Very well. As he won this game I says, "This will make it one hundred and eighty rubles you owe me, and fifty games; and now I must go and get my supper." So I laid down my cue, and went off. I went and sat down all by myself, at a small table opposite the door; and I look in and see, and wonder what he will do. Well, what would you think? He began to walk up and down, up and down, probably thinking that no one's looking at him; and then he would give a pull at his hair, and then walk up and down again, and keep muttering to himself; and then he would pull his hair again. After that he wasn't seen for a week. Once he came into the dining-room as gloomy as could be, but he didn't enter the billiard-room. The prince caught sight of him. "Come," says he, "let's have a game." "No," says the other, "I am not going to play any more." "Nonsense! come along." "No," says he, "I won't come, I tell you. For you it's all one whether I go or not, yet for me it's no good to come here." And so he did not come for ten days more. And then, it being the holidays, he came dressed up in a dress suit: he'd evidently been into company. And he was here all day long; he kept playing, and he came the next day, and the third....