He was, in the main, very upright and honorable, and he felt that he had only done his duty, but the graceless Kapendiukhin made fun of him lightly. "Ekh, Genya, you live for show! You have polished up your soul like a samovar before a holiday, "and you go about boasting, 'look how brightly it shines!' But your soul is really brass, and a very dull affair, too." Sitanov remained calmly silent, either working hard or copying Lermontov's verses into his note-book. He spent all his spare time in this copying, and when I suggested to him: "Why, when you have plenty of money, don't you buy the book?" he answered: "No, it is better in my own handwriting." Having written a page in his pretty, small handwriting, he would read softly while he was waiting for the ink to dry: "Without regret, as a being apart, You will look down upon this earth, Where there is neither real happiness Nor lasting beauty." And he said, half-closing his eyes: "That is true. Ekh! and well he knows the truth, too!" The behavior of Sitanov to Kapendiukhin always amazed me. When he had been drinking, the Cossack always tried to pick a quarrel with his comrade, and Sitanov would go on for a long time bearing it, and saying persuasively: "That will do, let me alone!" And then he would start to beat the drunken man so cruelly that the workmen, who regarded internal dissensions amongst themselves merely as a spectacle, interfered between the friends, and separated them. "If we did n't stop Evgen in time, he would beat any one to death, and he would never forgive himself," they said. When he was sober Kapendiukhin ceaselessly jeered at Sitanov, making fun of his passion for poetry and his unhappy romance, obscenely, but unsuccessfully trying to arouse jealousy. Sitanov listened to the Cossack's taunts in silence, without taking offense, and he sometimes even laughed with Kapendiukhin at himself. They slept side by side, and at night they would hold long, whispered conversations about something. These conversations gave me no peace, for I was anxious to know what these two people who were so unlike each other found to talk about in such a friendly manner. But when I went near them, the Cossack yelled: "What do you want?" But Sitanov did not seem to see me. However, one day they called me, and the Cossack asked: "Maximich, if you were rich, what would you do?" "I would buy books." "And what else?" "I don't know." "Ekh!" said Kapendiukhin, turning away from me in disgust, but Sitanov said calmly: "You see; no one knows that, whether they be old or young. I tell you that riches in themselves are worth nothing, unless they are applied to some special purpose." I asked them, "What are you talking about?" "We don't feel inclined to sleep, and so we are talking," answered the Cossack.