"You are no doubt aware, _excellente amie_," he said, jauntily and coquettishly drawling his words, "what is meant by a Russian administrator, speaking generally, and what is meant by a new Russian administrator, that is the newly-baked, newly-established... _ces interminables mots Russes!_ But I don't think you can know in practice what is meant by administrative ardour, and what sort of thing that is." "Administrative ardour? I don't know what that is." "Well... _Vous savez chez nous... En un mot,_ set the most insignificant nonentity to sell miserable tickets at a railway station, and the nonentity will at once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, _pour montrer son pouvoir_ when you go to take a ticket. 'Now then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. _En un mot,_ I've read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad--_mais c'est très curieux_--drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, _les dames charmantes_, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service... _vous savez ces chants et le livre de Job_... on the simple pretext that 'foreigners are not allowed to loaf about a Russian church, and that they must come at the time fixed....' And he sent them into fainting fits.... That verger was suffering from an attack of administrative ardour, _et il a montré son pouvoir_." "Cut it short if you can, Stepan Trofimovitch." "Mr. von Lembke is making a tour of the province now. _En un mot,_ this Andrey Antonovitch, though he is a russified German and of the Orthodox persuasion, and even--I will say that for him--a remarkably handsome man of about forty..." "What makes you think he's a handsome man? He has eyes like a sheep's." "Precisely so. But in this I yield, of course, to the opinion of our ladies." "Let's get on, Stepan Trofimovitch, I beg you! By the way, you're wearing a red neck-tie. Is it long since you've taken to it?" "I've... I've only put it on to-day." "And do you take your constitutional? Do you go for a four-mile walk every day as the doctor told you to?" "N-not... always." "I knew you didn't! I felt sure of that when I was in Switzerland!" she cried irritably. "Now you must go not four but six miles a day! You've grown terribly slack, terribly, terribly! You're not simply getting old, you're getting decrepit.... You shocked me when I first saw you just now, in spite of your red tie, _quelle idee rouge_! Go on about Von Lembke if you've really something to tell me, and do finish some time, I entreat you, I'm tired."