side streets turning out of Tverskoy
Boulevard. When he came out of the house with his two friends it was
about eleven o'clock. The first snow had not long fallen, and all nature
was under the spell of the fresh snow. There was the smell of snow in
the air, the snow crunched softly under the feet; the earth, the roofs,
the trees, the seats on the boulevard, everything was soft, white,
young, and this made the houses look quite different from the day
before; the street lamps burned more brightly, the air was more
transparent, the carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the
fresh, light, frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the
white, youthful, feathery snow. "Against my will an unknown force,"
hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, "has led me to these
mournful shores."

"Behold the mill..." the artist seconded him, "in ruins now...."

"Behold the mill... in ruins now," the medical student repeated,
raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.

He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and then
sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:

"Here in old days when I was free,
Love, free, unfettered, greeted me."

The three of them went into a restaurant and, without taking off their
greatcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each. Before drinking the
second glass, Vassilyev noticed a bit of cork in his vodka, raised the
glass to his eyes, and gazed into it for a long time, screwing up
his shortsighted eyes. The medical student did not understand his
expression, and said:

"Come, why look at it? No philosophizing, please. Vodka is given us to
be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow to be walked
upon. For one evening anyway live like a human being!"

"But I haven't said anything..." said Vassilyev, laughing. "Am I
refusing to?"

There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with softened
feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them. In these strong,
healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully balanced everything is, how
finished and smooth is everything in their minds and souls! They sing,
and have a passion for the theatre, and draw, and talk a great deal,
and drink, and they don't have headaches the day after; they are both
poetical and debauched, both soft and hard; they can work, too, and be
indignant, and laugh without reason, and talk nonsense; they are warm,
honest, self-sacrificing, and as men a