The endless
talkativeness of Simon Yakovlevich (the young man had already
managed to inform his neighbours that he was called Simon
Yakovlevich Horizon) tired and irritated the passengers a trifle,
just like the buzzing of a fly, that on a sultry summer day
rhythmically beats against a window pane of a closed, stuffy room.
But still, he knew how to raise their spirits: he showed tricks of
magic; told Hebrew anecdotes, full of a fine humour of their own.
When his wife would go out on the platform to refresh herself, he
would tell such things that the general would melt into a beatific
smile, the land-owner would neigh, rocking his black-loam stomach,
while the sub-lieutenant, a smooth-faced boy, only a year out of
school, scarcely controlling his laughter and curiosity, would
turn away to one side, that his neighbours might not see him
turning red.
His wife tended Horizon with a touching, naive attention; she
wiped his face with a handkerchief, waved upon him with a fan,
adjusted his cravat every minute. And his face at these times
became laughably supercilious and stupidly self-conceited.
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