Maxim Gorky. About Garin-Mikhailovsky (№ 254549)

I asked: is it true that he once sowed forty acres of poppy?
- Why must it be forty? as if outraged Nikolai G. and primoris beautiful eyebrows, anxiously counted:
Forty sins off, if you kill the spider, forty times forty churches in Moscow, forty days after birth, a woman in the Church are not allowed, prayers, fortieth bear is the most dangerous. The devil knows where this magpie chatter? What do you think?
But apparently he was not very interested to know how I think, because immediately, slapping my shoulder a little with a strong hand, he said with admiration:
But if you, my friend, saw the Mack when it bloomed!