"What do you suppose?" asked Polzunkov, turning promptly, with a convulsively working face, to the young man with ringlets. "Well, gentlemen, a strange circumstance occurred, though indeed there was nothing strange in it: it was what is called an everyday affair--I simply took out of my pocket a roll of paper ... and he a roll of paper." "Paper notes?" "Paper notes; and we exchanged." "I don't mind betting that there's a flavour of bribery about it," observed a respectably dressed, closely cropped young gentleman. "Bribery!" Polzunkov caught him up. "'Oh, may I be a Liberal, Such as many I have seen!' If you, too, when it is your lot to serve in the provinces, do not warm your hands at your country's hearth.... For as an author said: 'Even the smoke of our native land is sweet to us.' She is our Mother, gentlemen, our Mother Russia; we are her babes, and so we suck her!" There was a roar of laughter. "Only would you believe it, gentlemen, I have never taken bribes?" said Polzunkov, looking round at the whole company distrustfully. A prolonged burst of Homeric laughter drowned Polzunkov's words in guffaws. "It really is so, gentlemen...." But here he stopped, still looking round at every one with a strange expression of face; perhaps--who knows?--at that moment the thought came into his mind that he was more honest than many of all that honourable company.... Anyway, the serious expression of his face did not pass away till the general merriment was quite over. "And so," Polzunkov began again when all was still, "though I never did take bribes, yet that time I transgressed; I put in my pocket a bribe ... from a bribe-taker ... that is, there were certain papers in my hands which, if I had cared to send to a certain person, it would have gone ill with Fedosey Nikolaitch." "So then he bought them from you?" "He did." "Did he give much?" "He gave as much as many a man nowadays would sell his conscience for complete, with all its variations ... if only he could get anything for it. But I felt as though I were scalded when I put the money in my pocket. I really don't understand what always comes over me, gentlemen--but I was more dead than alive, my lips twitched and my legs trembled; well, I was to blame, to blame, entirely to blame. I was utterly conscience-stricken; I was ready to beg Fedosey Nikolaitch's forgiveness." "Well, what did he do--did he forgive you?"