somebody here. Guess who it is. Ah, look, my boy has fallen asleep,
poor dear, he's drunk."

She meant Kalganov. He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for a
moment, sitting on the sofa. But he was not merely drowsy from drink; he
felt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, "bored." He was intensely
depressed by the girls' songs, which, as the drinking went on, gradually
became coarse and more reckless. And the dances were as bad. Two girls
dressed up as bears, and a lively girl, called Stepanida, with a stick in
her hand, acted the part of keeper, and began to "show them."

"Look alive, Marya, or you'll get the stick!"

The bears rolled on the ground at last in the most unseemly fashion, amid
roars of laughter from the closely-packed crowd of men and women.

"Well, let them! Let them!" said Grushenka sententiously, with an ecstatic
expression on her face. "When they do get a day to enjoy themselves, why
shouldn't folks be happy?"

Kalganov looked as though he had been besmirched with dirt.

"It's swinish, all this peasant foolery," he murmured, moving away; "it's
the game they play when it's light all night in summer."

He particularly disliked one "new" song to a jaunty dance-tune. It
described how a gentleman came and tried his luck with the girls, to see
whether they would love him:

The master came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?

But the girls could not love the master:

He would beat me cruelly
And such love won't do for me.

Then a gypsy comes along and he, too, tries:

The gypsy came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?

But they couldn't love the gypsy either:

He would be a thief, I fear,
And would cause me many a tear.

And many more men come to try their luck, among them a soldier:

The soldier came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?

But the soldier is rejected with contempt, in two indecent lines, sung
with absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The song
ends with a merchant:

The merchant came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?

And it appears that he wins their love because:

The merchant will make gold for me
And his queen I'll gladly be.

Kalvanov was positively indignant.

"That's just a song of yesterday," he said aloud. "Who writes such things
for them? They might just as well have h