nute he cried out in a
stentorian voice:

"KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!"--although Simeon, who was accustomed to his
manner paid very little attention to these cries.

There began a truly Russian hubbub, noisy and senseless. The rosy,
flaxen-haired, pleasing Tolpygin was playing LA SEGUIDILLE from CARMEN
on the piano, while Roly-Poly was dancing a Kamarinsky peasant dance to
its tune. His narrow shoulders hunched up, twisted all to one side, the
fingers of his hanging hands widely spread, he intricately hopped on
one spot from one long, thin leg to the other, then suddenly letting
out a piercing grunt, would throw himself upward and shout out in time
to his wild dance:

"Ugh! Dance on, Matthew,
Don't spare your boots, you! ..."

"Eh, for one stunt like that a quartern of brandy isn't enough!" he
would add, shaking his long, graying hair.

"They fee-ee-eel! the tru-u-u-uth!" roared the two friends, raising
with difficulty their underlids, grown heavy, beneath dull, bleary eyes.

The actor commenced to tell obscene anecdotes, pouring them out as from
a bag, and the women squealed from delight, bent in two from laughter
and threw themselves against the backs of their chairs. Veltman, who
had long been whispering with Pasha, inconspicuously, in the hubbub,
slipped out of the cabinet, while a few minutes after him Pasha also
went away, smiling with her quiet, insane and bashful smile.

But all of the remaining students as well, save Lichonin, one after the
other, some on the quiet, some under one pretext or another, vanished
from the cabinet and did not return for long periods. Volodya Pavlov
experienced a desire to look at the dancing; Tolpygin's head began to
ache badly, and he asked Tamara to lead him somewhere where he might
wash up; Petrovski, having "touched" Lichonin for three roubles on the
quiet, went out into the corridor and only from there despatched the
housekeeper Zociya for Little White Manka. Even the prudent and
fastidious Ramses could not cope with that spicy feeling which to-day's
strange, vivid and unwholesome beauty of Jennie excited in him. It
proved that he had some important, undeferrable business this morning;
it was necessary to go home and snatch a bit of sleep if only for a
couple of hours. But, having told good-bye to his companions, he,
before going out of the cabinet, rapidly and with deep significance
pointed the door out to Jennie with his eyes. She understood, slowly,
scarcely p