While he deliberated the shopman displayed his wares, and felt it incumbent upon him to entertain his customer.

“Here are English ones, a new pattern, only just received,” he prattled on.  “But I warn you, M’sieu, all these systems pale beside the Smith and Wesson.  The other day—­as I dare say you have read—­an officer bought from us a Smith and Wesson.  He shot his wife’s lover, and-would you believe it?-the bullet passed through him, pierced the bronze lamp, then the piano, and ricochetted back from the piano, killing the lap-dog and bruising the wife.  A magnificent record redounding to the honour of our firm!  The officer is now under arrest.  He will no doubt be convicted and sent to penal servitude.  In the first place, our penal code is quite out of date; and, secondly, M’sieu, the sympathies of the court are always with the lover.  Why is it?  Very simple, M’sieu.  The judges and the jury and the prosecutor and the counsel for the defence are all living with other men’s wives, and it’ll add to their comfort that there will be one husband the less in Russia.  Society would be pleased if the Government were to send all the husbands to Sahalin.  Oh, M’sieu, you don’t know how it excites my indignation to see the corruption of morals nowadays.  To love other men’s wives is as much the regular thing to-day as to smoke other men s cigarettes and to read other men’s books.  Every year our trade gets worse and worse —­it doesn’t mean that wives are more faithful, but that husbands resign themselves to their position and are afraid of the law and penal servitude.”

The shopman looked round and whispered:  “And whose fault is it, M’sieu?  The Government’s.”

“To go to Sahalin for the sake of a pig like that—­there’s no sense in that either,” Sigaev pondered.  “If I go to penal servitude it will only give my wife an opportunity of marrying again and deceiving a second husband.  She would triumph. . . .  And so I will leave her alive, I won’t kill myself, him . . .  I won’t kill either.  I must think of something more sensible and more effective.  I will punish them with my contempt, and will take divorce proceedings that will make a scandal.”

“Here, M’sieu, is another make,” said the shopman, taking down another dozen from the shelf.  “Let me call your attention to the original mechanism of the lock.”

In view of his determination a revolver was now of no use to Sigaev, but the shopman, meanwhile, getting more and more enthusiastic, persisted in displaying his wares before him.  The outraged husband began to feel ashamed that the shopman should be taking so much trouble on his account for nothing, that he should be smiling, wasting time, displaying enthusiasm for nothing.

“Very well, in that case,” he muttered, “I’ll look in again later on . . . or I’ll send someone.”

He didn’t see the expression of the shopman’s face, but to smooth over the awkwardness of the position a little he felt called upon to make some purchase.  But what should he buy?  He looked round the walls of the shop to pick out something inexpensive, and his eyes rested on a green net hanging near the door.