Alexyei Sergyeitch preferred the olden days.—­“Things were freer then, more seemly, I assure you on my honour!  But ever since the year one thousand and eight hundred” (why precisely from that year he did not explain), “this warring and this soldiering have come into fashion, my dear fellow.  These military gentlemen have mounted upon their heads some sort of plumes made of cocks’ tails, and made themselves like cocks; they have drawn their necks up tightly, very tightly ... they speak in hoarse tones, their eyes are popping out of their heads—­and how can they help being hoarse?  The other day some police corporal or other came to see me.—­’I have come to you, Your Well-Born,’ quoth he.... (A pretty way he had chosen to surprise me! ... for I know myself that I am well-born....) ‘I have a matter of business with you.’  But I said to him:  ’Respected sir, first undo the hooks on thy collar.  Otherwise, which God forbid, thou wilt sneeze!  Akh, what will become of thee!  What will become of thee!—­Thou wilt burst like a puff-ball....  And I shall be responsible for it!’ And how they drink, those military gentlemen—­o-ho-ho!  I generally give orders that they shall be served with champagne from the Don, because Don champagne and Pontacq are all the same to them; it slips down their throats so smoothly and so fast—­how are they to distinguish the difference?  And here’s another thing:  they have begun to suck that sucking-bottle, to smoke tobacco.  A military man will stick that same sucking-bottle under his moustache, between his lips, and emit smoke through his nostrils, his mouth, and even his ears—­and think himself a hero!  There are my horrid sons-in-law, for example; although one of them is a senator, and the other is some sort of a curator, they suck at the sucking-bottle also,—­and yet they regard themselves as clever men!...”

Alexyei Sergyeitch could not endure smoking tobacco, nor dogs, especially small dogs.—­“Come, if thou art a Frenchman, then keep a lap-dog.  Thou runnest, thou skippest hither and thither, and it follows thee, with its tail in the air ... but of what use is it to fellows like me?”—­He was very neat and exacting.  He never spoke of the Empress Katherine otherwise than with enthusiasm, and in a lofty, somewhat bookish style:  “She was a demi-god, not a human being!—­Only contemplate yon smile, my good sir,” he was wont to add, pointing at the Lampi portrait, “and admit that she was a demi-god!  I, in my lifetime, have been so happy as to have been vouchsafed the bliss of beholding yon smile, and to all eternity it will never be erased from my heart!”—­And thereupon he would impart anecdotes from the life of Katherine such as it has never been my lot to read or hear anywhere.  Here is one of them.  Alexyei Sergyeitch did not permit the slightest hint at the failings of the great Empress.  “Yes, and in conclusion,” he cried:  “is it possible to judge her as one judges other people?—­One day, as she was sitting in her powder-mantle, at the