y my tenderness, my anxieties, my raptures; in
so favourable a light did I exhibit her actions and her character, that
involuntarily she had to forgive me for my flirtation with Princess
Mary.

She rose, sat down beside us, and brightened up... and it was only
at two o'clock in the morning that we remembered that the doctors had
ordered her to go to bed at eleven.

CHAPTER X. 13th June.

HALF an hour before the ball, Grushnitski presented himself to me in
the full splendour of the uniform of the Line infantry. Attached to
his third button was a little bronze chain, on which hung a double
lorgnette. Epaulettes of incredible size were bent backwards and upwards
in the shape of a cupid's wings; his boots creaked; in his left hand he
held cinnamon-coloured kid gloves and a forage-cap, and with his right he
kept every moment twisting his frizzled tuft of hair up into tiny curls.
Complacency and at the same time a certain diffidence were depicted upon
his face. His festal appearance and proud gait would have made me
burst out laughing, if such a proceeding had been in accordance with my
intentions.

He threw his cap and gloves on the table and began to pull down
the skirts of his coat and to put himself to rights before the
looking-glass. An enormous black handkerchief, which was twisted into a
very high stiffener for his cravat, and the bristles of which supported
his chin, stuck out an inch over his collar. It seemed to him to be
rather small, and he drew it up as far as his ears. As a result of
that hard work--the collar of his uniform being very tight and
uncomfortable--he grew red in the face.

"They say you have been courting my princess terribly these last few
days?" he said, rather carelessly and without looking at me.

"'Where are we fools to drink tea!'" [271] I answered, repeating a pet
phrase of one of the cleverest rogues of past times, once celebrated in
song by Pushkin. "Tell me, does my uniform fit me well?... Oh, the
cursed Jew!... How it cuts me under the armpits!... Have you got any
scent?"

"Good gracious, what more do you want? You are reeking of rose pomade as
it is."

"Never mind. Give me some"...

He poured half a phial over his cravat, his pocket-handkerchief, his
sleeves.

"You are going to dance?" he asked.

"I think not."

"I am afraid I shall have to lead off the mazurka with Princess Mary,
and I scarcely know a single figure"...

"Have you asked her to dance the mazurka w