He liked talking about some actress or dancer, but not so sharply as a young sub-lieutenant usually talks about this subject. He was very pleased with his rank, to which he had recently been promoted, and though he would occasionally say, while lying on the sofa: "Ah, ah! vanity, all is vanity! So what if I'm a lieutenant?"- secretly he was very flattered by this new dignity; in conversation he often tried to hint at it indirectly, and once, when he ran across some scrivener in the street who seemed impolite to him, he immediately stopped him and in a few but sharp words gave him to know that before him stood a lieutenant and not some other sort of officer. He tried to expound it the more eloquently as two good-looking ladies were just passing by. Generally, Pirogov showed a passion for all that was fine, and he encouraged the artist Piskarev; however, this may have proceeded from his great desire to see his masculine physiognomy in a portrait. But enough about Pirogov's qualities. Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once. The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their description would be endless.
And so Pirogov would not cease his pursuit of the unknown lady, entertaining her now and then with questions to which she replied sharply, curtly, and with some sort of vague sounds. Through the dark Kazan gate they entered Meshchanskaya Street, the street of tobacco and grocery shops, of German artisans and Finnish nymphs. The blonde ran more quickly and fluttered through the gates of a rather dingy house. Pirogov followed her. She ran up the narrow, dark stairway and went in at a door, through which Pirogov also boldly made his way. He found himself in a big room with black walls and a soot-covered ceiling. There was a heap of iron screws, locksmith's tools, shiny coffeepots and candlesticks on the table; the floor was littered with copper and iron shavings. Pirogov realized at once that this was an artisan's dwelling. The unknown lady fluttered on through a side door. He stopped to think for a moment, but, following the Russian rule, resolved to go ahead. He entered a room in no way resembling the first, very neatly decorated, showing that the owner was a German. He was struck by an extraordinarily strange sight.
Before him sat Schiller-not the Schiller who wrote Wilhelm Tell and the History of the Thirty Years' War, but the well-known Schiller, the tinsmith of Meshchanskaya Street. Next to Schiller stood Hoffmann-not the writer Hoffmann, but a rather good cobbler from Ofitserskaya Street, a great friend of Schiller's. 10 Schiller was drunk and sat on a chair stamping his foot and heatedly saying something. All this would not have been so surprising to Pirogov, but what did surprise him was the extremely strange posture of the figures. Schiller was sitting, his rather fat nose stuck out and his head raised, while Hoffmann was holding him by this nose with two fingers and waggling the blade of his cobbler's knife just above the surface of it. Both personages were speaking in German, and therefore Lieutenant Pirogov, whose only German was "Gut Morgen," was able to understand nothing of this whole story. Schiller's words, however, consisted of the following:
"I don't want, I have no need of a nose!" he said, waving his arms. "For this one nose I need three pounds of snuff a month. And I pay in the Russian vile shop, because the German shop doesn't have Russian snuff, I pay in the Russian vile shop forty kopecks for each pound; that makes one rouble twenty kopecks; twelve times one rouble twenty kopecks makes fourteen roubles forty kopecks. Do you hear, Hoffmann my friend? For this one nose, fourteen roubles forty kopecks! Yes, and on feast days I snuff rappee, because I don't want to snuff Russian vile tobacco on feast days. I snuff two pounds of rappee a year, two roubles a pound. Six plus fourteen-twenty roubles forty kopecks on snuff alone. That's highway robbery! I ask you, Hoffmann my friend, is it not so?" Hoffmann, who was drunk himself, answered in the affirmative. "Twenty roubles forty kopecks! I'm a Swabian German; I have a king in Germany. I don't want a nose! Cut my nose off! Here's my nose!"
And had it not been for the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Pirogov, there is no doubt that Hoffmann would have cut Schiller's nose off just like that, because he was already holding his knife in such a position as if he were about to cut out a shoe sole.
Schiller found it extremely vexing that an unknown, uninvited person had suddenly hindered them so inopportunely. Despite his being under the inebriating fumes of beer and wine, he felt it somewhat indecent to be in the presence of an outside witness while looking and behaving in such a fashion. Meanwhile Pirogov bowed slightly and said with his usual pleasantness:
"You will excuse me…"
"Get out!" Schiller drawled.
This puzzled Lieutenant Pirogov. Such treatment was completely new to him. The smile that had barely appeared on his face suddenly vanished. With a sense of distressed dignity, he said:
"I find it strange, my dear sir… you must have failed to notice… I am an officer…"
"What is an officer! I am a Swabian German. Mineself" (here Schiller banged his fist on the table) "I can be an officer: a year and a half a Junker, 11 two years a sub-lieutenant, and tomorrow I'm right away an officer. But I don't want to serve. I'll do this to an officer-poof!" Here Schiller held his hand to his mouth and poofed on it.
Lieutenant Pirogov saw that there was nothing left for him but to withdraw. Nevertheless, such treatment, not at all befitting his rank, was disagreeable to him. He stopped several times on the stairs, as if wishing to collect his wits and think how to make Schiller sensible of his insolence. He finally concluded that Schiller could be excused because his head was full of beer; besides, he pictured the pretty blonde and decided to consign it all to oblivion. Next morning, Lieutenant Pirogov showed up very early at the tinsmith's shop. In the front room he was met by the pretty blonde, who asked in a rather stern voice that was very becoming to her little face:
"What can I do for you?"
"Ah, good morning, my little dear! You don't recognize me? Sly thing, such pretty eyes you have!" at which Lieutenant Pirogov was going to chuck her nicely under the chin with his finger.
But the blonde uttered a timorous exclamation and asked with the same sternness:
"What can I do for you?"
"Let me look at you, that's all," Lieutenant Pirogov said with a very pleasant smile, getting closer to her; but, noticing that the timorous blonde wanted to slip out the door, he added, "I'd like to order some spurs, my little dear. Can you make spurs for me? Though to love you, what's needed is not spurs but a bridle. Such pretty hands!"