y else is nice but ugly, and that a fourth would not
have been bad-looking if his nose were not like a thimble, and so
on.

"And you, _Monsieur Nicolas_," says Varenka's mamma, turning to me,
"are not handsome, but you are attractive. . . . There is something
about your face. . . . In men, though, it's not beauty but intelligence
that matters," she adds, sighing.

The young ladies sigh, too, and drop their eyes . . . they agree
that the great thing in men is not beauty but intelligence. I steal
a glance sideways at a looking-glass to ascertain whether I really
am attractive. I see a shaggy head, a bushy beard, moustaches,
eyebrows, hair on my cheeks, hair up to my eyes, a perfect thicket
with a solid nose sticking up out of it like a watch-tower. Attractive!
h'm!

"But it's by the qualities of your soul, after all, that you will
make your way, _Nicolas_," sighs Nadenka's mamma, as though affirming
some secret and original idea of her own.

And Nadenka is sympathetically distressed on my account, but the
conviction that a man passionately in love with her is sitting
opposite is obviously a source of the greatest enjoyment to her.

When they have done with men, the young ladies begin talking about
love. After a long conversation about love, one of the young ladies
gets up and goes away. Those that remain begin to pick her to pieces.
Everyone agrees that she is stupid, unbearable, ugly, and that one
of her shoulder-blades sticks out in a shocking way.

But at last, thank goodness! I see our maid. My _maman_ has sent
her to call me in to dinner. Now I can make my escape from this
uncongenial company and go back to my work. I get up and make my
bows.

Varenka's _maman_, Varenka herself, and the variegated young ladies
surround me, and declare that I cannot possibly go, because I
promised yesterday to dine with them and go to the woods to look
for mushrooms. I bow and sit down again. My soul is boiling with
rage, and I feel that in another moment I may not be able to answer
for myself, that there may be an explosion, but gentlemanly feeling
and the fear of committing a breach of good manners compels me to
obey the ladies. And I obey them.

We sit down to dinner. The wounded officer, whose wound in the
temple has affected the muscles of the left cheek, eats as though
he had a bit in his mouth. I roll up little balls of bread, think
about the dog licence, and, knowing the ungovernable violence of
my temper, try to a