acting with excessive stupidity in
pretending to be enjoying myself, to like drinking a great deal, and to
be in no way drunk, as well as that every one else present was acting
with equal stupidity in pretending those same things. All the time I had
a feeling that each one of my companions was finding the festivities as
distasteful as I was myself; but, in the belief that he was the only one
doing so, felt himself bound to pretend that he was very merry, in order
not to mar the general hilarity. Also, strange to state, I felt that
I ought to keep up this pretence for the sole reason that into a
punch-bowl there had been poured three bottles of champagne at nine
roubles the bottle and ten bottles of rum at four--making seventy
roubles in all, exclusive of the supper. So convinced of my folly did
I feel that, when, at next day's lecture, those of my comrades who had
been at Baron Z.'s party seemed not only in no way ashamed to remember
what they had done, but even talked about it so that other students
might hear of their doings, I felt greatly astonished. They all declared
that it had been a splendid "wine," that Dorpat students were just the
fellows for that kind of thing, and that there had been consumed at it
no less than forty bottles of rum among twenty guests, some of whom had
dropped senseless under the table! That they should care to talk about
such things seemed strange enough, but that they should care to lie
about them seemed absolutely unintelligible.

XL. MY FRIENDSHIP WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS

That winter, too, I saw a great deal both of Dimitri who often looked
us up, and of his family, with whom I was beginning to stand on intimate
terms.

The Nechludoffs (that is to say, mother, aunt, and daughter) always
spent their evenings at home, at which time the Princess liked young men
to visit her--at all events young men of the kind whom she described
as able to spend an evening without playing cards or dancing. Yet such
young fellows must have been few and far between, for, although I went
to the Nechludoffs almost every evening, I seldom found other guests
present. Thus, I came to know the members of this family and their
several dispositions well enough to be able to form clear ideas as
to their mutual relations, and to be quite at home amid the rooms
and furniture of their house. Indeed, so long as no other guests were
present, I felt entirely at my ease. True, at first I used to feel a
little uncomfo