right that he was afraid I should be put
out of countenance on that score. Accordingly, he bid me don my patent
leather boots, and was horrified to find that I wanted to put on gloves
of peau de chamois. Next, he adjusted my watch-chain in a particular
manner, and carried me off to a hairdresser's near the Kuznetski Bridge
to have my locks coiffured. That done, he withdrew to a little distance
and surveyed me.

"Yes, he looks right enough now" said he to the hairdresser.
"Only--couldn't you smooth those tufts of his in front a little?" Yet,
for all that Monsieur Charles treated my forelocks with one essence and
another, they persisted in rising up again when ever I put on my hat. In
fact, my curled and tonsured figure seemed to me to look far worse than
it had done before. My only hope of salvation lay in an affectation of
untidiness. Only in that guise would my exterior resemble anything at
all. Woloda, apparently, was of the same opinion, for he begged me to
undo the curls, and when I had done so and still looked unpresentable,
he ceased to regard me at all, but throughout the drive to the
Kornakoffs remained silent and depressed.

Nevertheless, I entered the Kornakoffs' mansion boldly enough, and it
was only when the Princess had invited me to dance, and I, for some
reason or another (though I had driven there with no other thought in
my head than to dance well), had replied that I never indulged in that
pastime, that I began to blush, and, left solitary among a crowd of
strangers, became plunged in my usual insuperable and ever-growing
shyness. In fact, I remained silent on that spot almost the whole
evening!

Nevertheless, while a waltz was in progress, one of the young princesses
came to me and asked me, with the sort of official kindness common to
all her family, why I was not dancing. I can remember blushing hotly
at the question, but at the same time feeling--for all my efforts
to prevent it--a self-satisfied smile steal over my face as I began
talking, in the most inflated and long-winded French, such rubbish as
even now, after dozens of years, it shames me to recall. It must
have been the effect of the music, which, while exciting my nervous
sensibility, drowned (as I supposed) the less intelligible portion of my
utterances. Anyhow, I went on speaking of the exalted company present,
and of the futility of men and women, until I had got myself into such
a tangle that I was forced to stop short in the middle