One of the principal advantages of hunting, my dear readers, consists in its forcing you to be constantly moving from place to place, which is highly agreeable for a man of no occupation. It is true that sometimes, especially in wet weather, it's not over pleasant to roam over by-roads, to cut 'across country,' to stop every peasant you meet with the question, 'Hey! my good man! how are we to get to Mordovka?' and at Mordovka to try to extract from a half-witted peasant woman (the working population are all in the fields) whether it is far to an inn on the high-road, and how to get to it—and then when you have gone on eight miles farther, instead of an inn, to come upon the village of Hudobubnova, to the great of a whole of pigs, who have been wallowing up to their ears in the black mud in the middle of the village street, without the slightest of ever being disturbed. There is no great joy either in having to cross that dance under your feet; to drop down into ravines; to across streams: it is not over-pleasant to tramp twenty-four hours on end through the sea of green that covers the highroads or (which God forbid!) stay for hours stuck in the mud before a striped with the figures 22 on one side and 23 on the other; it is not wholly pleasant to live for weeks together on eggs, milk, and the rye-bread affect to be so fond of…. But there is ample compensation for all these inconveniences and in pleasures and advantages of another sort. Let us come, though, to our story.  
After all I have said above, there is no need to explain to the reader how I happened five years ago to be at Lebedyan just in the very thick of the horse-fair. We sportsmen may often set off on a fine morning from our more or less ancestral roof, in the full intention of returning there the following evening, and little by little, still in pursuit of snipe, may get at last to the blessed banks of Petchora. Besides, every lover of the gun and the dog is a admirer of the noblest animal in the world, the horse. And so I turned up at Lebedyan, stopped at the hotel, changed my clothes, and went out to the fair. (The waiter, a thin youth of twenty, had already informed me in a sweet nasal that his Excellency Prince N——, who purchases the chargers of the—regiment, was staying at their house; that many other gentlemen had arrived; that some gypsies were to sing in the evenings, and there was to be a performance of Pan Tvardovsky at the theatre; that the horses were fetching good prices; and that there was a fine show of them.)
 
In the market square there were endless rows of carts up, and behind the carts, horses of every possible kind: racers, stud-horses, dray horses, cart-horses, posting-hacks, and simple peasants' . Some fat and , by colours, covered with striped horse-cloths, and tied up short to high racks, turned glances backward at the too familiar whips of their owners, the horse-dealers; private owners' horses, sent by noblemen of the steppes a hundred or two hundred miles away, in charge of some old coachman and two or three headstrong stable-boys, shook their long necks, stamped with , and at the fences; roan horses, from Vyatka, close to one another; race-horses, dapple-grey, , and sorrel, with large hindquarters, flowing tails, and shaggy legs, stood in immobility like lions. stopped respectfully before them. The avenues formed by the rows of carts were with people of every class, age, and appearance; horse-dealers in long blue coats and high caps, with sly faces, were on the look-out for purchasers; gypsies, with staring eyes and curly heads, strolled up and down, like uneasy spirits, looking into the horses' mouths, lifting up a or a tail, shouting, swearing, as go-betweens, casting lots, or hanging about some army horse-contracter in a foraging-cap and military cloak, with collar. A stalwart Cossack rode up and down on a lanky gelding with the neck of a stag, offering it for sale 'in one lot,' that is, saddle, , and all. Peasants, in sheepskins torn at the arm-pits, were forcing their way despairingly through the crowd, or packing themselves by dozens into a cart harnessed to a horse, which was to be 'put to the test,' or somewhere on one side, with the aid of a wily gypsy, they were bargaining till they were , clasping each other's hands a hundred times over, each still sticking to his price, while the subject of their dispute, a wretched little covered with a shrunken mat, was blinking quite unmoved, as though it was no concern of hers…. And, after all, what difference did it make to her who was to have the beating of her? Broad-browed landowners, with dyed moustaches and an expression of dignity on their faces, in Polish hats and cotton overcoats pulled half-on, were talking condescendingly with fat merchants in felt hats and green gloves. Officers of different were crowding everywhere; an lanky cuirassier of German extraction was languidly inquiring of a horse-dealer 'what he expected to get for that .' A fair-haired young hussar, a boy of nineteen, was choosing a trace-horse to match a lean carriage-horse; a post-boy in a low-crowned hat, with a peacock's feather twisted round it, in a brown coat and long leather gloves tied round the arm with narrow, greenish bands, was looking for a shaft-horse. Coachmen were plaiting the horses' tails, wetting their manes, and giving respectful advice to their masters. Those who had completed a stroke of business were hurrying to hotel or to , according to their class…. And all the crowd were moving, shouting, , quarrelling and making it up again, swearing and laughing, all up to their knees in the mud. I wanted to buy a set of three horses for my covered trap; mine had begun to show signs of breaking down. I had found two, but had not yet succeeded in picking up a third. After a hotel dinner, which I cannot bring myself to describe (even Aeneas had discovered how painful it is to dwell on sorrows past), I repaired to a café so-called, which was the evening resort of the purchasers of mounts, horse-breeders, and other persons. In the billiard-room, which was in grey floods of tobacco smoke, there were about twenty men. Here were free-and-easy young landowners in jackets and grey trousers, with long curling hair and little waxed moustaches, staring about them with gentlemanly ; other noblemen in Cossack dress, with extraordinarily short necks, and eyes lost in layers of fat, were snorting with distinctness; merchants sat a little apart on the qui-vive, as it is called; officers were chatting freely among themselves. At the billiard-table was Prince N—— a young man of two-and-twenty, with a lively and rather contemptuous face, in a coat hanging open, a red silk shirt, and loose pantaloons; he was playing with the ex-, Viktor Hlopakov.
 
The ex-lieutenant, Viktor Hlopakov, a little, thinnish, dark man of thirty, with black hair, brown eyes, and a thick snub nose, is a frequenter of elections and horse-fairs. He walks with a skip and a , waves his fat hands with a swagger, cocks his cap on one side, and tucks up the sleeves of his military coat, showing the blue-black cotton . Mr. Hlopakov knows how to gain the favour of rich scapegraces from Petersburg; smokes, drinks, and plays cards with them; calls them by their names. What they find to like in him it is rather hard to comprehend. He is not clever; he is not amusing; he is not even a . It is true they treat him with friendly casualness, as a good-natured fellow, but rather a fool; they chum with him for two or three weeks, and then all of a sudden do not recognise him in the street, and he on his side, too, does not recognise them. The chief of Lieutenant Hlopakov consists in his continually for a year, sometimes two at a time, using in season and out of season one expression, which, though not in the least humorous, for some reason or other makes everyone laugh. Eight years ago he used on every occasion to say, "'Umble respecks and duty," and his patrons of that date used always to fall into fits of laughter and make him repeat ''Umble respecks and duty'; then he began to adopt a more complicated expression: 'No, that's too, too k'essk'say,' and with the same brilliant success; two years later he had invented a fresh saying: 'Ne voo excite _voo_self pa, man of sin, sewn in a sheepskin,' and so on. And strange to say! these, as you see, not overwhelmingly phrases, keep him in food and drink and clothes. (He has run through his property ages ago, and lives upon his friends.) There is, observe, absolutely no other attraction about him; he can, it is true, smoke a hundred pipes of Zhukov tobacco in a day, and when he plays , throws his right leg higher than his head, and while taking aim shakes his cue ; but, after all, not everyone has a fancy for these . He can drink, too … but in Russia it is hard to gain distinction as a drinker. In short, his success is a complete to me…. There is one thing, perhaps; he is ; he has no taste for washing dirty away from home, never speaks a word against anyone.
 
'Well,' I thought, on seeing Hlopakov, 'I wonder what his catchword is now?'
 
The prince hit the white.
 
'Thirty love,' a consumptive marker, with a dark face and blue rings under his eyes.
 
The prince sent the yellow with a crash into the farthest pocket.
 
'Ah!' a merchant, sitting in the corner at a little one-legged table, boomed approvingly from the depths of his chest, and immediately was overcome by confusion at his own . But luckily no one noticed him. He drew a long breath, and stroked his beard.
 
'Thirty-six love!' the marker shouted in a nasal voice.
 
'Well, what do you say to that, old man?' the prince asked Hlopakov.
 
'What! rrrrakaliooon, of course, simply rrrrakaliooooon!'
 
The prince roared with laughter.
 
'What? what? Say it again.'
 
'Rrrrrakaliooon!' repeated the ex-lieutenant .
 
'So that's the catchword!' thought I.
 
The prince sent the red into the pocket.
 
'Oh! that's not the way, prince, that's not the way,' lisped a fair-haired young officer with red eyes, a tiny nose, and a babyish, sleepy face. 'You shouldn't play like that … you ought … not that way!'
 
'Eh?' the prince over his shoulder.
 
'You ought to have done it … in a triplet.'
 
'Oh, really?' muttered the prince.
 
'What do you say, prince? Shall we go this evening to hear the gypsies?' the young man hurriedly went on in confusion. 'Styoshka will sing … Ilyushka….'
 
The prince no reply.
 
'Rrrrrakaliooon, old boy,' said Hlopakov, with a sly of his left eye.
 
And the prince exploded.
 
'Thirty-nine to love,' sang out the marker.
 
'Love … just look, I'll do the trick with that yellow.' … Hlopakov, fidgeting his cue in his hand, took aim, and missed.
 
'Eh, rrrakalioon,' he cried with vexation.
 
The prince laughed again.
 
'What, what, what?'
 
'Your honour made a miss,' observed the marker. 'Allow me to chalk the cue…. Forty love.'
 
'Yes, gentlemen,' said the prince, addressing the whole company, and not looking at any one in particular; 'you know, Verzhembitskaya must be called before the curtain to-night.'
 
'To be sure, to be sure, of course,' several voices cried in , amazingly flattered at the chance of answering the prince's speech; 'Verzhembitskaya, to be sure….'
 
'Verzhembitskaya's an excellent actress, far superior to Sopnyakova,' whined an ugly little man in the corner with moustaches and spectacles. Luckless ! he was secretly sighing at Sopnyakova's feet, and the prince did not even him a look.
 
'Wai-ter, hey, a pipe!' a tall gentleman, with regular features and a most majestic manner—in fact, with all the external symptoms of a card-sharper—muttered into his .
 
A waiter ran for a pipe, and when he came back, announced to his excellency that the Baklaga was asking for him.
 
'Ah! tell him to wait a minute and take him some vodka.'
 
'Yes, sir.'
 
Baklaga, as I was told afterwards, was the name of a youthful, handsome, and excessively depraved groom; the prince loved him, made him presents of horses, went out hunting with him, spent whole nights with him…. Now you would not know this same prince, who was once a rake and a scapegrace…. In what good odour he is now; how straight-laced, how ! How to the government—and, above all, so

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