ds of night moths,
whose shadows--confused and large--hovered below, on the ground. Hungry
women, too lightly, dressily, and fancifully attired, preserving on
their faces an expression of care-free merriment or haughty, offended
unapproachability, strolled back and forth in pairs, with a walk
already tired and dragging.

All the tables in the restaurant were taken--and over them floated the
continuous noise of knives upon plates and a motley babel, galloping in
waves. It smelt of rich and pungent kitchen fumes. In the middle of the
restaurant, upon a stand, Roumanians in red frocks were playing; all
swarthy, white-toothed, with the faces of whiskered, pomaded apes, with
their hair licked down. The director of the orchestra, bending forward
and affectedly swaying, was playing upon a violin and making unseemly
sweet eyes at the public--the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything
together--this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly
bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy perfumes,
this ringing music, with willful slowings up of the tempo, with
voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the tempestuous passages
screwed up--everything fitted the one to the other, forming a general
picture of insane and stupid luxury, a setting for an imitation of a
gay, unseemly carouse.

Above, around the entire hall, ran open galleries, upon which, as upon
little balconies, opened the doors of the private cabinets. In one of
these cabinets four were sitting--two ladies and two men; an artiste
known to all Russia, the cantatrice Rovinskaya, a large, handsome
woman, with long, green, Egyptian eyes, and a long, red, sensuous
mouth, the lips of which were rapaciously drooping at the corners; the
baroness Tefting, little, exquisite, pale--she was everywhere seen with
the artiste; the famous lawyer Ryazanov; and Volodya Chaplinsky, a rich
young man of the world, a composer-dilettante, the author of several
darling little ballads and many witticisms upon the topics of the day,
which circulated all over town.

The walls of the cabinet were red, with a gold design. On the table,
among the lighted candelabra, two white, tarred necks of bottles stuck
up out of an electroplated vase, which had sweated from the cold, and
the light in a tenuous gold played in the shallow goblets of wine.
Outside, near the doors, a waiter was on duty, leaning against the
wall; while the stout, tall, important maitre d'hotel,