“No, the water is cold,” replied Zvantzev, shrinking at her glance. “As you please!” The woman shrugged her shoulders. “But it is about time you did it, and then, there’s also plenty of water now, so that you wouldn’t spoil it all with your rotten body.” “Fie, how witty!” hissed the youth, turning away from her, and added with contempt: “In Russia even the prostitutes are rude.” He addressed himself to his neighbour, but the latter gave him only an intoxicated smile in return. Ookhtishchev was also drunk. Staring into the face of his companion, with his eyes grown dim, he muttered something and heard nothing. The lady with the bird-like face was pecking candy, holding the box under her very nose. Pavlinka went away to the edge of the raft and, standing there, threw orange peels into the water. “I never before participated in such an absurd outing and--company,” said Zvantzev, to his neighbour, plaintively. And Foma watched him with a smile, delighted that this feeble and ugly-looking man felt bored, and that Sasha had insulted him. Now and then he cast at her a kind glance of approval. He was pleased with the fact that she was so frank with everybody and that she bore herself proudly, like a real gentlewoman. The peasant seated himself on the boards at her feet, clasped his knees in his hands, lifted his face to her and seriously listened to her words. “You must raise your voice, when I lower mine, understand?” “I understand; but, Madam, you ought to hand me some just to give me courage!” “Foma, give him a glass of brandy!” And when the peasant emptied it, cleared his throat with pleasure, licked his lips and said: “Now, I can do it,” she ordered, knitting her brow: “Begin!” The peasant made a wry mouth, lifted his eyes to her face, and started in a high-pitched tenor: “I cannot drink, I cannot eat.” Trembling in every limb, the woman sobbed out tremulously, with strange sadness: “Wine cannot gladden my soul.” The peasant smiled sweetly, tossed his head to and fro, and closing his eyes, poured out into the air a tremulous wave of high-pitched notes: “Oh, time has come for me to bid goodbye!” And the woman, shuddering and writhing, moaned and wailed: “Oi, from my kindred I must part.” Lowering his voice and swaying to and fro, the peasant declaimed in a sing-song with a remarkably intense expression of anguish: “Alas, to foreign lands I must depart.”