f secret sensual delirium, and only his German
training, stinginess and cowardice helped him to hold his constantly
aroused desires in check. But two or three times a year, with
incredible privations, he would cut five or ten roubles out of his
beggarly budget, denying himself in his beloved evening mug of beer and
contriving to save on the street cars, which necessitated his making
enormous distances on foot through the town. This money he set aside
for women and spent it slowly, with gusto, trying to prolong and
cheapen down the enjoyment as much as possible. And for his money he
wanted a very great deal, almost the impossible; his German sentimental
soul dimly thirsted after innocence, timidity, poesy, in the flaxen
image of Gretchen; but as a man he dreamt, desired, and demanded that
his caresses should bring a woman into rapture and palpitation and into
a sweet exhaustion.

However, all the men strove for the very same thing--even the most
wretched, monstrous, misshapen and impotent of them--and ancient
experience had long ago taught the women to imitate with voice and
movements the most flaming passion, retaining in the most tempestuous
minutes the fullest sang froid.

"You might at least order the musicians to play a polka. Let the girls
dance a little," asked Liuba grumblingly.

That suited him. Under cover of the music, amid the jostling of the
dances, it was far more convenient to get up courage, arise, and lead
one of the girls out of the drawing room, than to do it amid the
general silence and the finical immobility.

"And how much does that cost?" he asked cautiously.

"A quadrille is half a rouble; but ordinary dances are thirty kopecks.
Is it all right then?"

"Well, of course...if you please...I don't begrudge it," he agreed,
pretending to be generous...

"Whom do you speak to?"

"Why, over there--to the musicians."

"Why not? ... I'll do it with pleasure...Mister musician, something in
the light dances, if you please," he said, laying down his silver on
the pianoforte.

"What will you order?" asked Isaiah Savvich, putting the money away in
his pocket. "Waltz, polka, polka-mazourka?"

"Well...Something sort of..."

"A waltz, a waltz!" Vera, a great lover of dancing, shouted from her
place.

"No, a polka! ... A waltz! ... A vengerka! ... A waltz!" demanded
others.

"Let them play a polka," decided Liuba in a capricious tone. "Isaiah
Savvich, play a little polka, please. This is my husb