“Here. He is sobering up a little in the wardrobe. They searched for him all over town, and at last they found the darling in a tavern engaged in a hot battle with some apprentice; they did not even allow him to finish the fistic argument, but pulled them apart, and brought him here. Now he is nursing a beautiful black eye.” “Bring him in here, the rascal.” The young man ran briskly across the stage and vanished behind the scenes. And immediately the empty theatre loudly resounded with his piping voice: “Kostovsky! Kostovsky!” “He will come at once,” the man said on returning, and winked his eye as if wishing to say: “The comedy will start immediately.” A slow, unsteady step was heard approaching, and upon the stage appeared the man who had caused so much bad blood and ill-feeling and whom the sea would not accept. He was of middle height, sinuous, muscular, and slightly round-shouldered, dressed in a coarse blue blouse full of paint spots and girded by a leather strap; his trousers, bespattered with paint, he wore tucked into his tall boots. Kostovsky had the appearance of a common workman, with long, muscular hands like those of a gorilla, and probably of great strength; his far from good-looking but very characteristic face, with its prominent cheek-bones and long, reddish mustaches, breathed of power. From under knitted brows gloomily, and at the same time good-naturedly, looked out a pair of large blue eyes. The main peculiarity of this face was an expression of impetuousness and energy; his left eye was embellished by a large discoloration--the mark of a well-aimed blow--and his coarse, reddish locks bristled out rebelliously in all directions. On the whole, Kostovsky impressed one as a bold, untamable being. He bowed, at once shamefacedly and proudly, and did not offer any one his hand. “What are you up to now, Kostovsky? Eh?” the stage-manager spoke in a freezingly cold manner. “The play is announced for to-morrow and we shall have to revoke it! What are you doing me all this injury for? Is it honest of you? Why are you drinking? Just look what an ornament you have under the eye! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Kostovsky took a step backward, thrust his long fingers through his locks, and suddenly became alight with a passionate, indomitable emotion: “Mark Lukich!” he exclaimed in a dull, husky, but convincing voice: “I drank! That is true! But now--basta! I will make everything necessary! To-day is Saturday and there is no performance, I shall not go out of here till to-morrow! I shall work the whole night through! I! I--Ach, thou great God!” Kostovsky waved his hands in the air, and it seemed that he was suddenly possessed with a desperate energy. He longed for work as for expiation. “But do you understand what there is to be done? Entirely new scenery must be painted. And painted good! Do you understand? Painted g-o-o-d!”