"But one need not hang oneself, I suppose, for that," Romashov consoled himself by thinking, after he had finished the foregoing meditation. "One must try and borrow. Let us now take the victims in turn. Well, the 1st Company, Osadchi?" Before Romashov's mind's eye appeared Osadchi's peculiar but well-formed features and his heavy, brutal expression. "No, anybody else in the world except him. Second Company, Taliman? Ah, that poor devil, who is borrowing all the year round, even from the ensigns. He won't do. Take another name--Khutinski?" But just at that moment a mad boyish idea crossed Romashov's mind. "Suppose I go and borrow money from the Colonel himself. What then would be likely to happen? First he would be numbed with horror at such a piece of impudence; next he would begin trembling with rage, then he would fire, as if from a mortar, the words: 'Wha-at! Si-lence!'" Romashov burst out laughing. "How in the world can a day that began so happily as this ever end sadly and sorrowfully? Yes, I don't know yet how the problem is to be solved, but an inward voice has told me that all will go well. Captain Duvernois? No, Duvernois is a skinflint, and, besides, he can't bear me. I know that." In this way he went through all the officers of his company, from the first to the sixteenth, without getting a step nearer his goal. He was just about to despair altogether when suddenly a new name sprang up in his head--Lieutenant-Colonel Rafalski. "Rafalski! What an ass I am! Hainán, my coat, gloves, cap. Make haste!" Lieutenant-Colonel Rafalski, commander of the 4th Battalion, was an incorrigible old bachelor, and, in addition, a most eccentric character, who was called by his comrades "Colonel Brehm." He associated with no one, was seen among the circle of his brother officers only on occasions of ceremony, i.e. at Easter and on New Year's Day, and he neglected his duties to such a degree that at drill he was the constant object of furious invectives on the part of the higher authorities. All his time, all his attention, and all his unconsumed funds of love and tenderness, which he really possessed, were devoted to his idolized _protégés_, his wild creatures--brutes, birds, and fishes, of which he owned almost an entire menagerie. The ladies of the regiment, who in the depths of their hearts were highly incensed with Rafalski for his unconcealed contempt of women, used to say of him: "Such a dreadful man, and what dreadful animals he keeps! Such dirtiness in his house, and, pardon the expression, what a nasty smell he carries with him wherever he goes."