am a habitue.
In any case, one can only envy everybody's cordiality toward you."

"The local chieftain!" said Boris Sobashnikov, curling his lips
downward, but said it so low that Platanov, if he chose to, could
pretend that he had not heard anything distinctly. This reporter had
for long aroused in Boris some blind and prickling irritation. That he
was not one of his own herd really meant nothing. But Boris, like many
students (and also officers, junkers, and high-school boys) had grown
accustomed to the fact that the outside "civilian" people, who
accidentally fell into a company of students on a spree, should hold
themselves somewhat subordinately and with servility in it, flatter the
studying youths, be struck with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire
its self-admiration, recall their own student years with a sigh of
suppressed envy. But in Platonov there not only was none of this
customary wagging of the tail before youth, but, on the contrary, there
was to be felt a certain abstracted, calm and polite indifference.

Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered--and angered with a petty,
jealous vexation--by that simple and yet anticipatory attention which
was shown to the reporter by everybody in the establishment, beginning
with the porter and ending with the fleshy, taciturn Katie. This
attention was shown in the way he was listened to, in that triumphal
carefulness with which Tamara filled his glass, and in the way Little
White Manka pared a pear for him solicitously, and in the delight of
Zoe, who had caught the case skillfully thrown to her across the table
by the reporter, when she had vainly asked for a cigarette from her two
neighbors, who were lost in conversation; and in the way none of the
girls begged either chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively
gratitude for his little services and his treating. "Pimp!" Sobashkinov
had almost decided mentally with malice, but did not believe it even
himself--the reporter was altogether too homely and too carelessly
dressed, and moreover he bore himself with great dignity.

Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent remark
made by the student. He only nervously crumpled a napkin in his fingers
and lightly threw it aside from him. And again his eyelids quivered in
the direction of Boris Sobashnikov.

"Yes, true, I am one of the family here," he continued calmly, moving
his glass in slow circles on the table. "Just think, I dined in this
very hou