false prudence and an insincere fatigue.

And a third said through a feigned yawn:

"Let's better go home, gentlemen ... a-a-a ... go bye-bye ... That's
enough for to-day."

"You won't work any wonders when you're asleep," Lichonin remarked
sneeringly. "Herr professor, are you coming?"

But the sub-professor Yarchenko was obstinate and seemed really
angered, although, perhaps, he himself did not know what was lurking
within him, in some dark cranny of his soul.

"Leave me in peace, Lichonin. As I see it, gentlemen, this is downright
and plain swinishness--that which you are about to do. We have passed
the time so wonderfully, amiably and simply, it seems,--but no, you
needs must, like drunken cattle, clamber into a cesspool. I won't go."

"Still, if my memory does not play me false," said Lichonin, with calm
causticity, "I recollect that no further back than past autumn we with
a certain future Mommsen were pouring in some place or other a jug of
ice into a pianoforte, delineating a Bouratian god, dancing the
belly-dance, and all that sort of thing?"

Lichonin spoke the truth. In his student days, and later, being
retained at the university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and
crack-brained life. In all the taverns, cabarets, and other places of
amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy cheeks,
puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining, humid kindly
eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech and shrill
laughter remembered.

His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ in
study, but nevertheless he went through all examinations and prescribed
work with distinction and from the first course the professors had him
in view. Now Yarchenko was beginning little by little to quit his
former comrades and bottle companions. He had just established the
indispensable connections with the professorial circle; the reading of
lectures in Roman history for the coming year had been offered him, and
not infrequently in conversation he would use the expression current
among the sub-professors: "We, the learned ones!" The student
familiarity, the compulsory companionship, the obligatory participation
in all meetings, protests and demonstrations, were becoming
disadvantageous to him, embarrassing, and even simply tedious. But he
knew the value of popularity among the younger element, and for that
reason could not decide to sever relations abruptly with his former
c