trying
to bluster, in the hope of intimidating him. "Every one saw me do it,"
I added, including the students near me in my glance. Several of them
looked at me with curiosity, yet none of them spoke.

"Seats cannot be booked here," said Operoff. "Whoever first sits down
in a place keeps it," and, settling himself angrily where he was, he
flashed at me a glance of defiance.

"Well, that only means that you are a cad," I said.

I have an idea that he murmured something about my being "a stupid young
idiot," but I decided not to hear it. What would be the use, I asked
myself, of my hearing it? That we should brawl like a couple of manants
over less than nothing? (I was very fond of the word manants, and often
used it for meeting awkward junctures.) Perhaps I should have said
something more had not, at that moment, a door slammed and the professor
(dressed in a blue frockcoat, and shuffling his feet as he walked)
ascended the rostrum.

Nevertheless, when the examination was about to come on, and I had need
of some one's notebooks, Operoff remembered his promise to lend me his,
and we did our preparation together.

XXXVII. AFFAIRS OF THE HEART

Affaires du coeur exercised me greatly that winter. In fact, I fell in
love three times. The first time, I became passionately enamoured of a
buxom lady whom I used to see riding at Freitag's riding-school; with
the result that every day when she was taking a lesson there (that is to
say, every Tuesday and Friday) I used to go to gaze at her, but always
in such a state of trepidation lest I should be seen that I stood a long
way off, and bolted directly I thought her likely to approach the spot
where I was standing. Likewise, I used to turn round so precipitately
whenever she appeared to be glancing in my direction that I never
saw her face well, and to this day do not know whether she was really
beautiful or not.

Dubkoff, who was acquainted with her, surprised me one day in the
riding-school, where I was lurking concealed behind the lady's grooms
and the fur wraps which they were holding, and, having heard from
Dimitri of my infatuation, frightened me so terribly by proposing to
introduce me to the Amazon that I fled incontinently from the school,
and was prevented by the mere thought that possibly he had told her
about me from ever entering the place again, or even from hiding behind
her grooms, lest I should encounter her.

Whenever I fell in love with ladies whom