They thought and thought, and eventually they hit upon something. It had been repeatedly noticed that Gerásim could not abide intoxicated persons.... As he sat at the gate, he turned away angrily whenever any man with a load of drink aboard passed him with unsteady steps, and the visor of his cap over his ear. They decided to instruct Tatyána to pretend to be intoxicated, and to walk past Gerásim reeling and staggering. The poor girl would not consent for a long time, but they prevailed upon her; moreover, she herself saw that otherwise she would not be able to get rid of her adorer. She did it. Kapíton was released from the lumber-room; the affair concerned him, anyhow. Gerásim was sitting on the guard-stone at the gate and jabbing the ground with his shovel.... There were people staring at him from round all the corners, from behind the window-shades.... The ruse was completely successful. When first he caught sight of Tatyána, he nodded his head with an affectionate bellow; then he took a closer look, dropped his shovel, sprang to his feet, stepped up to her, put his face close down to her face... She reeled worse than ever with terror, and closed her eyes.... He seized her by the arm, dashed the whole length of the courtyard, and entering the room where the council was in session with her, he thrust her straight at Kapíton. Tatyána was fairly swooning.... Gerásim stood there, glared at her, waved his hand, laughed, and departed, clumping heavily to his little den.... For four-and-twenty hours he did not emerge thence. Antípka, the postilion, related afterward how, peeping through a crack, he had beheld Gerásim seated on his bed, with his head resting on his hand, quietly, peaceably, and only bellowing from time to time; then he would rock himself to and fro, cover his eyes, and shake his head, as postilions or stevedores do when they strike up their melancholy chanteys. Antípka was frightened, and he retreated from the crack. But when, on the following day, Gerásim emerged from his den, no particular change was noticeable in him. He merely seemed to have become more surly, and paid not the slightest attention to Tatyána and Kapíton. On that same evening, both of them, with geese under their arms, wended their way to the mistress, and a week later they were married. On the wedding-day itself, Gerásim did not alter his demeanour in the slightest degree; only, he returned from the river without water: somehow, he had smashed the cask on the road; and at night, in the stable, he so zealously curried his horse that the animal reeled like a blade of grass in a gale, and shifted from foot to foot under his iron fists.