“Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in an honourable house...”

“Now then! Enough! I have told you already...”

“Ilya Petrovitch!” the head clerk repeated significantly.

The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk slightly shook his head.

“... So I tell you this, most respectable Luise Ivanovna, and I tell it you for the last time,” the assistant went on. “If there is a scandal in your honourable house once again, I will put you yourself in the lock-up, as it is called in polite society. Do you hear? So a literary man, an author took five roubles for his coat-tail in an ‘honourable house’? A nice set, these authors!”