When Peredonov went out of his house to look for Volodin, the other met him on the way in his bowler hat, with his stick, jumping along gaily and laughing his bleating laugh. "Why do you always wear a bowler?" Peredonov once asked him. "Well, why shouldn't I wear a bowler, Ardalyon Borisitch?" replied Volodin gaily and shrewdly. "It's modest and becoming. I'm not allowed to wear a cap with a badge, and as for a top-hat, let the aristocrats stick to it, it doesn't become us." "You'll roast in your bowler," said Peredonov morosely. Volodin sniggered. They went to Peredonov's house. "One has to do so much walking," complained Peredonov. "It's good to take exercise, Ardalyon Borisitch," said Volodin persuasively. "You work, you take a walk, you eat your meals, and you're healthy." "Well, yes," said Peredonov, "do you think that in two or three hundred years from now people will have to work?" "What else is there to do? If you don't work, you have no bread to eat. You buy bread with money and you have to earn the money." "But I don't want bread." "But there wouldn't be any rolls or tarts either," said Volodin with a snigger. "No one would have any money to buy vodka, and there wouldn't be anything to make liqueurs of." "No, the people themselves won't work," said Peredonov. "There'll be machines for everything--all you'll have to do is to turn a handle like an _ariston_[2] and it's ready.... But it would be a bore to turn it long." Volodin lapsed into thought, lowered his head, stuck out his lips and said, reflectively: "Yes, that would be very good. Only none of us will live to see it." Peredonov looked at him malignantly and grumbled: "You mean you won't live to see it, but I shall." "May God grant you," said Volodin gaily, "to live two hundred years, and then to crawl on all fours for three hundred." Peredonov no longer pronounced exorcisms--let the worst come. He would triumph over everything; he had only to be on his guard and not yield. Once at home, sitting in the dining-room and drinking with Volodin, Peredonov told him about the Princess. The Princess, according to Peredonov, grew more decrepit and terrible from day to day; yellow, wrinkled, bent, tusked, evil, she incessantly haunted Peredonov. "She's two hundred years old," said Peredonov, looking strangely and gloomily before him, "and she wants me to make it up with her again. Until then she won't give me a job." "She certainly wants a good deal," said Volodin shaking his head. "The old hag!" Peredonov brooded over murder. He said to Volodin, frowning savagely: "I've got one hidden behind the wall-paper. And I'm going to kill another under the floor." But Volodin was not afraid, and kept on sniggering. "Do you smell the stench from behind the wall-paper?" asked Peredonov. "No, I don't smell it," said Volodin, still sniggering and grimacing. "Your nose is blocked up," said Peredonov. "No wonder it's gone red. It's rotting there behind the wall-paper."