hat we, the
flower and glory--of the Russian intelligentzia, will go all to pieces
and let our mouths water at the sight of the first skirt that comes our
way."

"I swear it!" said Lichonin, putting up his hand.

"I can vouch for myself," said Ramses.

"And I! And I! By God, gentlemen, let's pledge our words ... Yarchenko
is right," others took up.

They seated themselves in twos and threes in the cabs--the drivers of
which had been long since following them in a file, grinning and
cursing each other--and rode off. Lichonin, for the sake of assurance,
sat down beside the sub-professor, having embraced him around the waist
and seated him on his knees and those of his neighbour, the little
Tolpygin, a rosy, pleasant-faced boy on whose face, despite his
twenty-three years, the childish white down--soft and light--still
showed.

"The station is at Doroshenko's!" called out Lichonin after the cabbies
driving off. "The stop is at Doroshenko's," he repeated, turning around.

They all stopped at Doroshenko's restaurant, entered the general room,
and crowded about the bar. All were satiated and no one wanted either
to drink or to have a bite. But in the soul of each one still remained
a dark trace of the consciousness that right now they were getting
ready to commit something needlessly shameful, getting ready to take
part in some convulsive, artificial, and not at all a merry merriment.
And in each one was the yearning to bring himself through intoxication
to that misty and rainbow condition when nothing makes any difference,
and when the head does not know what the arms and legs are doing, and
what the tongue is babbling. And, probably, not the students alone, but
all the casual and constant visitors of Yama experienced in greater or
lesser degree the friction of this inner psychic heart-sore, because
Doroshenko did business only late in the evening and night, and no one
lingered long in his place but only turned in in passing, half-way on
the journey.

While the students were drinking cognac, beer and vodka, Ramses was
constantly and intently looking into the farthest corner of the
restaurant hall, where two men were sitting--a tattered, gray, big old
man, and, opposite him, his back to the bar, with his elbows spread out
upon the table and his chin resting on the fists folded upon each
other, some hunched up, stout, closely-propped gentleman in a gray
suit. The old man was picking upon a dulcimer lying before him an