Secret of the Night

Ermolai bowed and returned to the garden. The "e;barinia"e; left the veranda, where she had come for this conversation with the old servant of General Trebassof, her husband, and returned to the dining-room in the datcha des Iles, where the gay Councilor Ivan Petrovitch was regaling his amused associates with his latest exploit at Cubat's resort. They were a noisy company, and certainly the quietest among them was not the general, who nursed on a sofa the leg which still held him captive after the recent attack, that to his old coachman and his two piebald horses had proved fatal. The story of the always-amiable Ivan Petrovitch (a lively, little, elderly man with his head bald as an egg) was about the evening before. After having, as he said, "e;recure la bouche"e; for these gentlemen spoke French like their own language and used it among themselves to keep their servants from understanding-after having wet his whistle with a large glass of sparkling rosy French wine, he cried