“I have some excellent triple mead; maybe you would take a glass of it?”
“It is a fool who refuses when a wise man offers. The barber has enjoined me to drink mead to draw melancholy from my head. Troublesome times for the nobility are approaching,--dies iræ et calamitatis. Chaplinski is breathless from fear; he visits Dopula’s no longer, for the Cossack elders drink there. I alone set my forehead bravely against danger, and keep company with those colonels, though their dignity smells of tar. Good mead! really very excellent! Where do you get it?”
“I got this in Lubni. Are there many Cossack elders here?”
“Who is not here? Fedor Yakubovich, Old Filon Daidyalo, Danilo Nechai, and their eye in the head, Bogun, who became my friend as soon as I outdrank him and promised to adopt him. Chig
