“You seem to be talking nonsense again, Ferdishenko,” growled the general.
“What is the matter, excellency? I know how to keep my place. When I said just now that we, you and I, were the lion and the a*s of Kryloff’s fable, of course it is understood that I take the role of the a*s. Your excellency is the lion of which the fable remarks:‘A mighty lion, terror of the woods, Was shorn of his great prowess by old age.’
And I, your excellency, am the ass.”
“I am of your opinion on that last point,” said Ivan Fedorovitch, with ill-concealed irritation.
All this was no doubt extremely coarse, and moreover it was premeditated, but after all Ferdishenko had persuaded everyone to accept him as a buffoon.
“If I am admitted and tolerated here,” he had said one day, “it is simply because I tal
