se was admitted.

They began by drinking a big wine-glass of vodka and eating oysters.

"Good!" said Almer. "It was I brought oysters into fashion for the
first course, my boy. The vodka burns and stings your throat and
you have a voluptuous sensation in your throat when you swallow an
oyster. Don't you?"

A dignified waiter with a shaven upper lip and grey whiskers put a
sauceboat on the table.

"What's that you are serving?" asked Frolov.

"Sauce Provencale for the herring, sir. . . ."

"What! is that the way to serve it?" shouted Frolov, not looking
into the sauceboat. "Do you call that sauce? You don't know how to
wait, you blockhead!"

Frolov's velvety eyes flashed. He twisted a corner of the table-cloth
round his finger, made a slight movement, and the dishes, the
candlesticks, and the bottles, all jingling and clattering, fell
with a crash on the floor.

The waiters, long accustomed to pot-house catastrophes, ran up to
the table and began picking up the fragments with grave and unconcerned
faces, like surgeons at an operation.

"How well you know how to manage them!" said Almer, and he laughed.
"But . . . move a little away from the table or you will step in
the caviare."

"Call the engineer here!" cried Frolov.

This was the name given to a decrepit, doleful old man who really
had once been an engineer and very well off; he had squandered all
his property and towards the end of his life had got into a restaurant
where he looked after the waiters and singers and carried out various
commissions relating to the fair sex. Appearing at the summons, he
put his head on one side respectfully.

"Listen, my good man," Frolov said, addressing him. "What's the
meaning of this disorder? How queerly you fellows wait! Don't you
know that I don't like it? Devil take you, I shall give up coming
to you!"

"I beg you graciously to excuse it, Alexey Semyonitch!" said the
engineer, laying his hand on his heart. "I will take steps immediately,
and your slightest wishes shall be carried out in the best and
speediest way."

"Well, that'll do, you can go. . . ."

The engineer bowed, staggered back, still doubled up, and disappeared
through the doorway with a final flash of the false diamonds on his
shirt-front and fingers.

The table was laid again. Almer drank red wine and ate with relish
some sort of bird served with truffles, and ordered a matelote of
eelpouts and a sterlet with its tail in its mouth. Frolov on