th it. Kalganov took it from him and
poured out the champagne.

"Another! Another bottle!" Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and, forgetting
to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to
their good understanding, he drank off his glass without waiting for any
one else. His whole countenance suddenly changed. The solemn and tragic
expression with which he had entered vanished completely, and a look of
something childlike came into his face. He seemed to have become suddenly
gentle and subdued. He looked shyly and happily at every one, with a
continual nervous little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who
has done wrong, been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten
everything, and was looking round at every one with a childlike smile of
delight. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his
chair close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two
Poles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet.

The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanor and his Polish
accent; and, above all, by his pipe. "Well, what of it? It's a good thing
he's smoking a pipe," he reflected. The Pole's puffy, middle-aged face,
with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed and impudent-looking
mustaches, had not so far roused the faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not
even particularly struck by the Pole's absurd wig made in Siberia, with
love-locks foolishly combed forward over the temples. "I suppose it's all
right since he wears a wig," he went on, musing blissfully. The other,
younger Pole, who was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and
listening to the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed
Mitya by his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on
the sofa. "If he stood up he'd be six foot three." The thought flitted
through Mitya's mind. It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must be the
friend of the other, as it were, a "bodyguard," and no doubt the big Pole
was at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But this all seemed
to Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned. In his mood of doglike
submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away.

Grushenka's mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he completely
failed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart, was that she was
kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him sit by her. He was
beside himself with