that was not now the chief and the
most important matter: I had to make haste and at all costs save my
reputation in the eyes of Zverkov and Simonov as quickly as possible;
that was the chief business. And I was so taken up that morning that I
actually forgot all about Liza.

First of all I had at once to repay what I had borrowed the day before
from Simonov. I resolved on a desperate measure: to borrow fifteen
roubles straight off from Anton Antonitch. As luck would have it he
was in the best of humours that morning, and gave it to me at once, on
the first asking. I was so delighted at this that, as I signed the IOU
with a swaggering air, I told him casually that the night before "I had
been keeping it up with some friends at the Hotel de Paris; we were
giving a farewell party to a comrade, in fact, I might say a friend of
my childhood, and you know--a desperate rake, fearfully spoilt--of
course, he belongs to a good family, and has considerable means, a
brilliant career; he is witty, charming, a regular Lovelace, you
understand; we drank an extra 'half-dozen' and ..."

And it went off all right; all this was uttered very easily,
unconstrainedly and complacently.

On reaching home I promptly wrote to Simonov.

To this hour I am lost in admiration when I recall the truly
gentlemanly, good-humoured, candid tone of my letter. With tact and
good-breeding, and, above all, entirely without superfluous words, I
blamed myself for all that had happened. I defended myself, "if I
really may be allowed to defend myself," by alleging that being utterly
unaccustomed to wine, I had been intoxicated with the first glass,
which I said, I had drunk before they arrived, while I was waiting for
them at the Hotel de Paris between five and six o'clock. I begged
Simonov's pardon especially; I asked him to convey my explanations to
all the others, especially to Zverkov, whom "I seemed to remember as
though in a dream" I had insulted. I added that I would have called
upon all of them myself, but my head ached, and besides I had not the
face to. I was particularly pleased with a certain lightness, almost
carelessness (strictly within the bounds of politeness, however), which
was apparent in my style, and better than any possible arguments, gave
them at once to understand that I took rather an independent view of
"all that unpleasantness last night"; that I was by no means so utterly
crushed as you, my friends, probably imagine; but