where the buffet was,
as though they had been put up to it beforehand, and learning that
there was no buffet they began swearing with brutal directness, and an
unprecedented insolence; some of them, it is true, were drunk when they
came. Some of them were dazed like savages at the splendour of the
hall, as they had never seen anything like it, and subsided for a minute
gazing at it open-mouthed. This great White Hall really was magnificent,
though the building was falling into decay: it was of immense size, with
two rows of windows, with an old-fashioned ceiling covered with gilt
carving, with a gallery with mirrors on the walls, red and white
draperies, marble statues (nondescript but still statues) with heavy old
furniture of the Napoleonic period, white and gold, upholstered in red
velvet. At the moment I am describing, a high platform had been put
up for the literary gentlemen who were to read, and the whole hall was
filled with chairs like the parterre of a theatre with wide aisles for
the audience.

But after the first moments of surprise the most senseless questions and
protests followed. "Perhaps we don't care for a reading.... We've paid
our money.... The audience has been impudently swindled.... This is our
entertainment, not the Lembkes!" They seemed, in fact, to have been
let in for this purpose. I remember specially an encounter in which the
princeling with the stand-up collar and the face of a Dutch doll, whom I
had met the morning before at Yulia Mihailovna's, distinguished himself.
He had, at her urgent request, consented to pin a rosette on his left
shoulder and to become one of our stewards. It turned out that this dumb
wax figure could act after a fashion of his own, if he could not talk.
When a colossal pockmarked captain, supported by a herd of rabble
following at his heels, pestered him by asking "which way to the
buffet?" he made a sign to a police sergeant. His hint was promptly
acted upon, and in spite of the drunken captain's abuse he was
dragged out of the hall. Meantime the genuine public began to make its
appearance, and stretched in three long files between the chairs. The
disorderly elements began to subside, but the public, even the most
"respectable" among them, had a dissatisfied and perplexed air; some of
the ladies looked positively scared.

At last all were seated; the music ceased. People began blowing their
noses and looking about them. They waited with too solemn an air--which