grily.

"The moderates have so far been working among the upper classes,"
Solomin remarked, "and we must go for the lower."

"We don't want it! damnation! We don't want it!" Golushkin bawled out
furiously. "We must do everything with one blow! With one blow, I say!"

"What is the use of extreme measures? It's like jumping out of the
window."

"And I'll jump too, if necessary!" Golushkin shouted. "I'll jump! and
so will Vasia! I've only to tell him and he'll jump! eh, Vasia? You'll
jump, eh?"

The clerk finished his glass of champagne.

"Where you go, Kapiton Andraitch, there I follow. I shouldn't dare do
otherwise."

"You had better not, or I'll make mincemeat of you!"

Soon a perfect babel followed.

Like the first flakes of snow whirling round and round in the mild
autumn air, so words began flying in all directions in Golushkin's hot,
stuffy dining-room; all kinds of words, rolling and tumbling over one
another: progress, government, literature, the taxation question, the
church question, the woman question; the law-court question, realism,
nihilism, communism, international, clerical, liberal, capital,
administration, organisation, association, and even crystallisation!
It was just what Golushkin wanted; this uproar seemed to him the real
thing. He was triumphant. "Look at us! out of the way or I'll knock
you on the head! Kapiton Golushkin is coming!" At last the clerk Vasia
became so tipsy that he began to giggle and talk to his plate. All
at once he jumped up shouting wildly, "What sort of devil is this
PROgymnasium?"

Golushkin sprang up too, and throwing back his hot, flushed face, on
which an expression of vulgar self-satisfaction was curiously mingled
with a feeling of terror, a secret misgiving, he bawled out, "I'll
sacrifice another thousand! Get it for me, Vasia!" To which Vasia
replied, "All right!"

Just then Paklin, pale and perspiring (he had been drinking no less than
the clerk during the last quarter of an hour), jumped up from his seat
and, waving both his arms above his head, shouted brokenly, "Sacrifice!
Sacrifice! What pollution of such a holy word! Sacrifice! No one dares
live up to thee, no one can fulfill thy commands, certainly not one of
us here--and this fool, this miserable money-bag opens its belly, lets
forth a few of its miserable roubles, and shouts 'Sacrifice!' And wants
to be thanked, expects a wreath of laurels, the mean scoundrel!"

Golushkin either did not hear or d