Champoun jumps up and, pale and wide-eyed, begins pacing up and down the room.
"What are you doing to me?" he says in despair, clutching at his head. "My God! accursed be that hour when the fatal thought of leaving my country entered my head! . . ."
"Come, come, come . . . I was joking!" says Kamyshev in a lower tone. "Queer fish he is; he doesn't understand a joke. One can't say a word!"
"My dear friend!" shrieks Champoun, reassured by Kamyshev's tone.
"I swear I am devoted to Russia, to you and your children. . . .
To leave you is as bitter to me as death itself! But every word you
utter stabs me to the heart!"
"Ah, you queer fish! If I do abuse the French, what reason have you to take offence? You are a queer fish really! You should follow the example of Lazar Isaakitch, my tenant. I call him one thing and another, a Jew, and a scurvy rascal, and I make a pig's ear out of my coat tail, and catch him by his Jewish curls. He doesn't take offence."
"But he is a slave! For a kopeck he is ready to put up with any insult!"
"Come, come, come . . . that's enough! Peace and concord!"
Champoun powders his tear-stained face and goes with Kamyshev to the dining-room. The first course is eaten in silence, after the second the same performance begins over again, and so Champoun's sufferings have no end.