“Honour before everything.”

After walking up and down a little longer he clutched his head in both hands and pronounced in a tragic voice:  “Yes, honour before everything!  Accursed be the moment when the idea first entered my head to visit this Babylon!  My dear friend,” he added, addressing the doctor, “you may despise me, I have played and lost; lend me five hundred roubles!”

Andrey Yefimitch counted out five hundred roubles and gave them to his friend without a word.  The latter, still crimson with shame and anger, incoherently articulated some useless vow, put on his cap, and went out.  Returning two hours later he flopped into an easy-chair, heaved a loud sigh, and said: 

“My honour is saved.  Let us go, my friend; I do not care to remain another hour in this accursed town.  Scoundrels!  Austrian spies!”

By the time the friends were back in their own town it was November, and deep snow was lying in the streets.  Dr. Hobotov had Andrey Yefimitch’s post; he was still living in his old lodgings, waiting for Andrey Yefimitch to arrive and clear out of the hospital apartments.  The plain woman whom he called his cook was already established in one of the lodges.

Fresh scandals about the hospital were going the round of the town.  It was said that the plain woman had quarrelled with the superintendent, and that the latter had crawled on his knees before her begging forgiveness.  On the very first day he arrived Andrey Yefimitch had to look out for lodgings.

“My friend,” the postmaster said to him timidly, “excuse an indiscreet question:  what means have you at your disposal?”

Andrey Yefimitch, without a word, counted out his money and said:  “Eighty-six roubles.”

“I don’t mean that,” Mihail Averyanitch brought out in confusion, misunderstanding him; “I mean, what have you to live on?”

“I tell you, eighty-six roubles . . .  I have nothing else.”

Mihail Averyanitch looked upon the doctor as an honourable man, yet he suspected that he had accumulated a fortune of at least twenty thousand.  Now learning that Andrey Yefimitch was a beggar, that he had nothing to live on he was for some reason suddenly moved to tears and embraced his friend.

XV

Andrey Yefimitch now lodged in a little house with three windows.  There were only three rooms besides the kitchen in the little house.  The doctor lived in two of them which looked into the street, while Daryushka and the landlady with her three children lived in the third room and the kitchen.  Sometimes the landlady’s lover, a drunken peasant who was rowdy and reduced the children and Daryushka to terror, would come for the night.  When he arrived and established himself in the kitchen and demanded vodka, they all felt very uncomfortable, and the doctor would be moved by pity to take the crying children into his room and let them lie on his floor, and this gave him great satisfaction.