and had grown accustomed
to everything, like an old horse on the tether of a threshing machine,
the possessor of a thick bass, but still a handsome woman; and Big
Manka, or Manka the Crocodile. Henrietta since still the preceding
night had not parted from the actor, who had taken her from the house
to a hotel.

Having seated himself alongside of Yarchenko, he straight off began to
play a new role--he became something on the order of an old good soul
of a landed proprietor, who had at one time been at a university
himself, and now can not look upon the students without a quiet,
fatherly emotion.

"Believe me, gentlemen, that one's soul rests from all these worldly
squabbles in the midst of youth," he was saying, imparting to his
depraved and harsh face an actor-like, exaggerated and improbable
expression of being moved. "This faith in a high ideal, these honest
impulses! ... What can be loftier and purer than our Russian students
as a body? ... KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!" he yelled deafeningly all of a
sudden, and dealt a heavy blow on the table with his fist.

Lichonin and Yarchenka did not wish to remain in debt to him. A spree
began. God knows in what manner Mishka the Singer and Nicky the
Book-keeper soon found themselves in the cabinet, and at once began
singing in their galloping voices:

"They fe-e-e-el the tru-u-u-uth,
Come thou daw-aw-aw-awning quicker ..."

There also appeared Roly-Poly, who had awakened. Letting his head drop
touchingly to one side and having made little narrowed, lachrymose,
sweet eyes in his wrinkled old face of a Don Quixote, he was speaking
in a persuasively begging tone:

"Gentlemen students ... you ought to treat a little old man. I love
education, by God! ... Allow me!"

Lichonin was glad to see everybody, but Yarchenko in the
beginning--until the champagne had mounted to his head--only raised
high his small, short eyebrows with a timorous, wondering and naive
air. It suddenly became crowded, smoky, noisy and close in the cabinet.
Simeon, with rattling, closed the blinds with bolts on the outside. The
women, just having gotten done with a visit or in the interim between
dances, walked into the room, sat on somebody's knees, smoked, sang
disjointedly, drank wine, kissed and again went away, and again came.
The clerks of Kereshkovsky, offended because the damsels bestowed more
attention upon the cabinet than the drawing room, did start a row and
tried to enter into a provo