now...."

Going into the next house, the friends stopped in the hall and did not
go into the drawing-room. Here, as in the first house, a figure in a
black coat, with a sleepy face like a flunkey's, got up from a sofa
in the hall. Looking at this flunkey, at his face and his shabby black
coat, Vassilyev thought: "What must an ordinary simple Russian have gone
through before fate flung him down as a flunkey here? Where had he been
before and what had he done? What was awaiting him? Was he married?
Where was his mother, and did she know that he was a servant here?"
And Vassilyev could not help particularly noticing the flunkey in each
house. In one of the houses--he thought it was the fourth--there was a
little spare, frail-looking flunkey with a watch-chain on his waistcoat.
He was reading a newspaper, and took no notice of them when they went
in. Looking at his face Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man
with such a face might steal, might murder, might bear false witness.
But the face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little
flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the
same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier overtaking
a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this man's hair, to
see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be coarse like a dog's.

III

Having drunk two glasses of porter, the artist became suddenly tipsy and
grew unnaturally lively.

"Let's go to another!" he said peremptorily, waving his hands. "I will
take you to the best one."

When he had brought his fri ends to the house which in his opinion was
the best, he declared his firm intention of dancing a quadrille.
The medical student grumbled something about their having to pay
the musicians a rouble, but agreed to be his _vis-a-vis_. They began
dancing.

It was just as nasty in the best house as in the worst. Here there were
just the same looking-glasses and pictures, the same styles of coiffure
and dress. Looking round at the furnishing of the rooms and the
costumes, Vassilyev realized that this was not lack of taste, but
something that might be called the taste, and even the style, of S.
Street, which could not be found elsewhere--something intentional in its
ugliness, not accidental, but elaborated in the course of years. After
he had been in eight houses he was no longer surprised at the color of
the dresses, at the long trains, the gaudy ribbons, the sailor dre