below were laughing and mamma
was shouting, and suddenly the music began to play, and Yura soon stood
in front of the orchestra, spreading his legs apart and, according to
his old but long forgotten habit, put his finger into his mouth. The
sounds seemed to strike at him all at once; they roared and thundered;
they made his legs tingle, and they shook his jaw. They played so loudly
that there was nothing but the orchestra on the whole earth--everything
else had vanished. The brass ends of some of the trumpets even spread
apart and opened wide from the great roaring; Yura thought that it would
be interesting to make a military helmet out of such a trumpet.

Suddenly Yura grew sad. The music was still roaring, but now it was
somewhere far away, while within him all became quiet, and it was
growing ever more and more quiet. Heaving a deep sigh, Yura looked at
the sky--it was so high--and with slow footsteps he started out to make
the rounds of the holiday, of all its confused boundaries, possibilities
and distances. And everywhere he turned out to be too late; he wanted
to see how the tables for card playing would be arranged, but the tables
were ready and people had been playing cards for a long time when he
came up. He touched the chalk and the brush near his father and his
father immediately chased him away. What of that, what difference did
that make to him? He wanted to see how they would start to dance and
he was sure that they would dance in the parlour, but they had already
commenced to dance, not in the parlour, but under the linden trees. He
wanted to see how they would light the lanterns, but the lanterns had
all been lit already, every one of them, to the very last of the last.
They lit up of themselves like stars.

Mamma danced best of all.

CHAPTER III

Night arrived in the form of red, green and yellow lanterns. While there
were no lanterns, there was no night. And now it lay everywhere. It
crawled into the bushes; it covered the entire garden with darkness, as
with water, and it covered the sky. Everything looked as beautiful as
the very best fairy tale with coloured pictures. At one place the house
had disappeared entirely; only the square window made of red light
remained. And the chimney of the house was visible and there a certain
spark glistened, looked down and seemed to think of its own affairs.
What affairs do chimneys have? Various affairs.

Of the people in the garden only their voices