In the evening the evil one brought him a full-bosomed lady in a red dress, and said that this was his new wife.  He spent the whole evening kissing her and eating gingerbreads, and at night he went to bed on a soft, downy feather-bed, turned from side to side, and could not go to sleep.  He felt uncanny.

“We have a great deal of money,” he said to his wife; “we must look out or thieves will be breaking in.  You had better go and look with a candle.”

He did not sleep all night, and kept getting up to see if his box was all right.  In the morning he had to go to church to matins.  In church the same honor is done to rich and poor alike.  When Fyodor was poor he used to pray in church like this:  “God, forgive me, a sinner!” He said the same thing now though he had become rich.  What difference was there?  And after death Fyodor rich would not be buried in gold, not in diamonds, but in the same black earth as the poorest beggar.  Fyodor would burn in the same fire as cobblers.  Fyodor resented all this, and, too, he felt weighed down all over by his dinner, and instead of prayer he had all sorts of thoughts in his head about his box of money, about thieves, about his bartered, ruined soul.

He came out of church in a bad temper.  To drive away his unpleasant thoughts as he had often done before, he struck up a song at the top of his voice.  But as soon as he began a policeman ran up and said, with his fingers to the peak of his cap: 

“Your honor, gentlefolk must not sing in the street!  You are not a shoemaker!”

Fyodor leaned his back against a fence and fell to thinking:  what could he do to amuse himself?

“Your honor,” a porter shouted to him, “don’t lean against the fence, you will spoil your fur coat!”

Fyodor went into a shop and bought himself the very best concertina, then went out into the street playing it.  Everybody pointed at him and laughed.

“And a gentleman, too,” the cabmen jeered at him; “like some cobbler....”

“Is it the proper thing for gentlefolk to be disorderly in the street?” a policeman said to him.  “You had better go into a tavern!”

“Your honor, give us a trifle, for Christ’s sake,” the beggars wailed, surrounding Fyodor on all sides.

In earlier days when he was a shoemaker the beggars took no notice of him, now they wouldn’t let him pass.

And at home his new wife, the lady, was waiting for him, dressed in a green blouse and a red skirt.  He meant to be attentive to her, and had just lifted his arm to give her a good clout on the back, but she said angrily: 

“Peasant!  Ignorant lout!  You don’t know how to behave with ladies!  If you love me you will kiss my hand; I don’t allow you to beat me.”

“This is a blasted existence!” thought Fyodor.  “People do lead a life!  You mustn’t sing, you mustn’t play the concertina, you mustn’t have a lark with a lady....  Pfoo!”