manage his application to the baroness, so that he might not again meet with a failure. His friend gave him many excellent hints—namely, to get himself nicely ‘shaven and shorn,’ to put on white gloves, to be careful not to have a particle of dust on his clothes, and to hold his hat in his hand all the time. It would also do no harm, he said, to have his coat a little perfumed with eau-de-Cologne, because an applicant must be careful not to offend even the nose of his gracious patroness. He must also on no account sit down, unless the baroness invited him to do so, and—nota bene—not to attempt to shake hands with her, but to kiss her hand should she offer it to him.
“‘What!’ exclaimed Cvok, angrily. ‘I am a man and a priest, and am I even to kiss the hand of this unjust, puffed-up peahen?’
“‘Well,’ replied the Rades̓ín priest, ‘you know one can’t always do just what one thinks or likes;’ and wound up his counsel by adding, ‘If you drop the least hint that you have any right to the living, you’ll be surely done for.’
“One fine afternoon Heavens went to the audience, all duly prepared; and when he entered the ‘presence’ such an odour exhaled from him that the baroness was almost seized with a fit of sneezing. You know, I suppose, that she cannot bear perfumes of any sort; so poor Cvok was done for even before he opened his lips to deliver his well-prepared speech, which he had learned by heart before setting out. Moreover, when the baroness scrutinized the applicant a little, she remarked (1) that he had a patch on his left boot; (2) that his white cotton gloves were not well washed, and that there was a hole in the second finger of the one on his right hand;
