Bambaev raised his head and hurriedly wiped his tears. ‘Welcome, dear heart,’ he whispered, ‘welcome and farewell!... You hear, they are calling me.’ ‘But what chance brought you here?’ inquired Litvinov, ‘and what does it all mean? I thought they were calling a Frenchman....’ ‘I am their ... house-steward, butler,’ answered Bambaev, and he pointed in the direction of the hut. ‘And I’m turned Frenchman for a joke. What could I do, brother? You see, I’d nothing to eat, I’d lost my last farthing, and so one’s forced to put one’s head under the yoke. One can’t afford to be proud.’ ‘But has he been long in Russia? and how did he part from his comrades?’ ‘Ah, my boy, that’s all on the shelf now.... The wind’s changed, you see.... Madame Suhantchikov, Matrona Semyonovna, he simply kicked out. She went to Portugal in her grief.’ ‘To Portugal? How absurd!’ ‘Yes, brother, to Portugal, with two Matronovtsys.’ ‘With whom?’ ‘The Matronovtsys; that’s what the members of her party are called.’ ‘Matrona Semyonovna has a party of her own? And is it a numerous one?’ ‘Well, it consists of precisely those two. And he will soon have been back here six months. Others have got into difficulties, but he was all right. He lives in the country with his brother, and you should just hear him now....’ ‘Bambaev!’ ‘Coming, Stepan Nikolaitch, coming. And you, dear old chap, are flourishing, enjoying yourself! Well, thank God for that! Where are you off to now?... There, I never thought, I never guessed.... You remember Baden? Ah, that was a place to live in! By the way, you remember Bindasov too? Only fancy, he’s dead. He turned exciseman, and was in a row in a public-house; he got his head broken with a billiard-cue. Yes, yes, hard times have come now! But still I say, Russia ... ah, our Russia! Only look at those two geese; why, in the whole of Europe there’s nothing like them! The genuine Arzamass breed!’ And with this last tribute to his irrepressible desire for enthusiasm, Bambaev ran off to the station hut, where again, seasoned with opprobrious epithets, his name was shouted.