Piotr Petrovitch almost fell on my neck, and, slightly staggering, drew me into a small private room. 'Come here,' he said, carefully seating me in an easy-chair; 'here you will be comfortable. Waiter, beer! No, I mean champagne! There, I'll confess, I didn't expect; I didn't expect... Have you been here long? Are you staying much longer? Well, God has brought us, as they say, together.' 'Yes, do you remember...' 'To be sure, I remember; to be sure, I remember!' he interrupted me hurriedly; 'it's a thing of the past...' 'Well, what are you doing here, my dear Piotr Petrovitch?' 'I'm living, as you can see. Life's first-rate here; they're a merry lot here. Here I've found peace.' And he sighed, and raised his eyes towards heaven. 'Are you in the service?' 'No, I'm not in the service yet, but I think I shall enter. But what's the service?... People are the chief thing. What people I have got to know here!...' A boy came in with a bottle of champagne on a black tray. 'There, and this is a good fellow.... Isn't that true, Vasya, that you're a good fellow? To your health!' The boy stood a minute, shook his head, decorously smiled, and went out. 'Yes, there are capital people here,' pursued Piotr Petrovitch; 'people of soul, of feeling.... Would you like me to introduce you?--such jolly chaps.... They'll all be glad to know you. I say... Bobrov is dead; that's a sad thing.' 'What Bobrov?' 'Sergay Bobrov; he was a capital fellow; he took me under his wing as an ignoramus from the wilds. And Panteley Gornostaev is dead. All dead, all!' 'Have you been living all the time in Moscow? You haven't been away to the country?' 'To the country!... My country place is sold.' 'Sold?' 'By auction.... There! what a pity you didn't buy it.' 'What are you going to live on, Piotr Petrovitch?' 'I shan't die of hunger; God will provide when I've no money. I shall have friends. And what is money.... Dust and ashes! Gold is dust!' He shut his eyes, felt in his pocket, and held out to me in the palm of his hand two sixpences and a penny. 'What's that? Isn't it dust and ashes' (and the money flew on the floor). 'But you had better tell me, have you read Polezhaev?' 'Yes.' 'Have you seen Motchalov in Hamlet?' 'No, I haven't.' 'You've not seen him, not seen him!...' (And Karataev's face turned pale; his eyes strayed uneasily; he turned away; a faint spasm passed over his lips.) 'Ah, Motchalov, Motchalov! "To die--to sleep!"' he said in a thick voice: 'No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die--to sleep!' 'To sleep--to sleep,' he muttered several times. 'Tell me, please,' I began; but he went on with fire: