"So thou art sure, then, that Pan Kraslavski exists? Thou hast mentioned him, I remember." "I have; and for that very reason I make no secret of the matter now. Besides, I know that people talk to the prejudice of my father-in-law and my wife, that they relate God knows what; hence I prefer to tell thee, as a friend, how things are. Pan Kraslavski lives in Bordeaux. He was an agent in selling sardines, and was earning good money, but he lost the position, for he took to drinking, and drinks absinthe; besides, he has created an illegal family. Those ladies send him three thousand francs yearly; but that sum does not suffice him, and, between remittance and remittance, need pinches the man. Because of this he drinks more, and torments those poor women with letters, threatening to publish in newspapers how they maltreat him; and they treat him better than he deserves. He wrote to me, too, immediately after my marriage, begging me to increase his allowance a thousand francs. Of course he informs me that those women have 'eaten him up;' that he hasn't had a copper's worth of happiness in life; that their selfishness has gnawed him, and warns me against them." Here Mashko laughed. "But the beast has a nobleman's courage. Once, from want, he was going to sell handbills in the corridor of the theatre; but the authorities ordered him to don a kind of helmet, and he could not endure that. He wrote to me as follows: 'All would have gone well, sir, but for the helmet; when they gave me that, I could not.' He preferred death by hunger to wearing the helmet! My father-in-law pleases me! I was in Bordeaux on a time, but forget what manner of helmets are worn by the venders of handbills; but I should like to see such a helmet. Thou wilt understand, of course, that I preferred to add the thousand francs, if I could keep him far away, with his helmet and his absinthe. This is what pains me, however: people say that even here he was a sort of tipstaff, or notary; and that is a low fiction, for it is enough to open the first book on heraldry to see who the Kraslavskis were. Here connections are known; and the Kraslavskis are in no lack of them. The man fell; but the family was and is famous. Those ladies have dozens of relatives who are not so and so; and if I tell this whole story, I do so because I wish thee to know what the truth is." But the truth touching the Kraslavskis concerned Pan Stanislav little; so he returned to the ladies, and all the more readily that Zavilovski had just come. Pan Stanislav had invited the young man to after-dinner tea, so as to show him photographs brought from Italy. In fact, piles of them were laid out on the table; but Zavilovski was holding in his hand the frame containing the photograph of Litka's head, and was so enchanted that immediately after they made him acquainted with Mashko, he looked again at the portrait, and continued to speak of it.