man and you'll say: 'He who has never fallen, has
never gotten up.' Come on, come on, Liubochka!"

While the inelaborate appetizers were being served, and each one was
ordering the meal, everybody, save Simanovsky, felt ill at ease and
somehow constrained. And Simanovsky himself was partly the reason for
this; he was a clean-shaven man, with pince-nez and long hair, with
head proudly thrown back and with a contemptuous expression on the
tight lips, drooping at the corners. He had no intimate, hearty friends
among his comrades; but his opinions and judgments had a considerable
authoritativeness among them. It is doubtful whether any one of them
could explain to himself whence this influence came; whether from his
self-assured appearance, his ability to seize and express in general
words the dismembered and indistinct things which are dimly sought and
desired by the majority, or because he always saved his conclusions for
the most appropriate moment. Among any society there are many of this
sort of people: some of them act upon their circle through sophistries;
others through adamant, unalterable stead-fastness of convictions; a
third group with a loud mouth; a fourth, through a malicious sneer; a
fifth, simply by silence, which compels the supposition of profound
thought behind it; a sixth, through a chattering, outward erudition;
others still through a slashing sneer at everything that is said ...
many with the terrible Russian word YERUNDA:
"Fiddlesticks!"--"Fiddlesticks!" they say contemptuously in reply to
the warm, sincere, probably truthful but clumsily put word. "But why
fiddlesticks?" "Because it's twaddle, nonsense," answer they, shrugging
their shoulders; and it is as though they did for a man by hitting him
with a stone over the head. There are many more sorts of such people,
bearing the bell at the head of the meek, the shy, the nobly modest,
and often even the big minds; and to their number did Simanovsky belong.

However, toward the middle of the dinner everybody's tongue became
loosened--except Liubka's, who kept silent, answered "yes" and "no",
and left her food practically untouched. Lichonin, Soloviev, and
Nijeradze talked most of all. The first, in a decisive and
business-like manner, trying to hide under the solicitous words
something real, inward, prickling and inconvenient. Soloviev, with a
puerile delight, with the most sweeping of gestures, hitting the table
with his fist. Nijeradze, with a sligh