Little Drummer Boy - The Monday Morning Memo

“‘Here,’ he said, in the tone of one chipping in. ‘This number is not prime.’

Nina looked up with an expression of disbelief.
‘Which number?’

He laid the paper in front of her and tapped a figure circled in red. ‘One thousand, one hundred and seventy-three.’

“How do you know it isn’t prime?’

‘If a number’s individual digits sum to a number that is divisible by three, then it too is divisible by three.’

Confronted with this extraordinary fact, Nina replied: ‘Mon Dieu.’ Then she leaned back in her chair and appraised the Count in a manner acknowledging that she may have underestimated him.

Now, when a man has been underestimated by a friend, he has some cause for taking offense – since it is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. They should have an exaggerated opinion of our moral fortitude, our aesthetic sensibilities, and our intellectual scope. Why, they should practically imagine us leaping through a window in the nick of time with the works of Shakespeare in one hand and a pistol in the other! But in this particular instance, the Count had to admit he had little grounds for taking offense. Because, for the life of him, he could not imagine from what dark corner of his adolescent mind this extraordinary fact had materialized.”

- A Gentleman in Moscow, p. 134

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