"You praise my tobacco, my good friends; now see what is going on inside the snuffbox."
Here, wiping with his handkerchief the soiled base of the box, he showed them a little painted army, like a swarm of flies: in the middle sat a man on a charger, the size of a beetle, evidently the leader of the troop; he had made his horse rear, as though he wanted to leap into the skies; one hand he held on the bridle, the other up to his nose.
"Gaze," said Robak, "at that threatening form, and guess whose it is."
All looked with curiosity.
"That is a great man, an emperor, but not of the Muscovites; their tsars have never used tobacco."
"A great man," cried Cydzik, "and in a long grey coat? I thought that great men wore gold, for among the Muscovites any sort of a general, sir, fairly shines with gold, like a pike in saffron."
"Bah!" interrupted Rymsza; "why, in my youth I saw Kosciuszko, the chief of our nation: he was a great man, but he wore a Cracow peasant's coat, that is to say, a czamara."
"Much he wore a czamara!" retorted Wilbik. "They used to call it a taratatka."82
"But the taratatka has fringe," shouted Mickiewicz, "and the other is entirely plain."
Thereupon there arose disputes over the various forms of the taratatka and the czamara.
The ingenious Robak, seeing that the conversation was thus becoming scattered, undertook again to gather it to a focus—to his snuffbox: he treated them, they sneezed and wished one another good health; he continued his speech:—
