“Oh, the nights have grown tiresome to me, and
      wearisome;
    To be parted from my dearie, from my mate! 
    Oh, haven’t I myself, woman-like, done a foolish
      thing—­
    Have stirred up the wrath of my own darling: 
    When I did call him a bitter drunkard! ...”

“Bitter drunkard!” the prince would repeat the last words together with her, and would forlornly toss his curly head, inclined to one side; and they both tried to end the song so that the scarcely seizable quivering of the guitar strings and the voice might by degrees grow quiet, and that it might not be possible to note when the sound ended and the silence came.

But then, in the matter of the panther’s skin, the work of the famous Georgian poet Rustavelli, prince Nijeradze fell down completely.  The beauty of the poem, of course, consisted in the way it sounded in the native tongue; but scarcely would he begin to read in sing-song his throaty, sibilant, hawking phrases, when Liubka would at first shake for a long time from irresistible laughter; then, finally, burst into laughter, filling the whole room with explosive, prolonged peals.  Then Nijeradze in wrath would slam shut the little tome of the adored writer, and swear at Liubka, calling her a mule and a camel.  However, they soon made up.

There were times when fits of goatish, mischievous merriment would come upon Nijeradze.  He would pretend that he wanted to embrace Liubka, would roll exaggeratedly passionate eyes at her, and would utter with a theatrically languishing whisper: 

“Me soul!  The best rosa in the garden of Allah!  Honey and milk are upon thy lips, and thy breath is better than the aroma of kabob.  Give me to drink the bliss of Nirvanah from the goblet of thy lips, O thou, my best Tifflissian she-goat!”

But she would laugh, get angry, strike his hands, and threaten to complain to Lichonin.

“V-va!” the prince would spread out his hands.  “What is Lichonin?  Lichonin is my friend, my brother, and bosom crony.  But then, does he know what loffe is?  Is it possible that you northern people understand loffe?  It’s we, Georgians, who are created for loffe.  Look, Liubka!  I’ll show you right away what loffe is!” He would clench his fists, bend his body forward, and would start rolling his eyes so ferociously, gnash his teeth and roar with a lion’s voice so, that a childish terror would encompass Liubka, despite the fact that she knew this to be a joke, and she would dash off running into another room.

It must be said, however, that for this lad, in general unrestrained in the matter of light, chance romances, existed special firm moral prohibitions, sucked in with the milk of his mother Georgian; the sacred adates concerning the wife of a friend.  And then, probably he understood—­and it must be said that these oriental men, despite their seeming naiveness—­and, perhaps, even owing to it—­possess, when they wish to, a fine psychic intuition—­he understood, that having made Liubka his mistress for even one minute, he would be forever deprived of this charming, quiet, domestic evening comfort, to which he had grown so used.  For he, who was on terms of thou-ing with almost the whole university, nevertheless felt himself so lonely in a strange city and in a country still strange to him!