w--price twenty roubles. Yet no sooner had I paid the twenty
roubles over the counter than my heart smote me for having put two
such beautifully dressed shop-assistants to so much trouble for such
a trifle. Moreover, I fancied that they were regarding me with some
disdain. Accordingly, in my desire to show them what manner of man I
was, I turned my attention to a silver trifle which I saw displayed in
a show-case, and, recognising that it was a porte-crayon (price eighteen
roubles), requested that it should forthwith be wrapped in paper for me.
Next, the money paid, and the information acquired that splendid pipes
and tobacco were to be obtained in an adjacent emporium, I bowed to the
two shopmen politely, and issued into the street with the picture under
my arm. At the shop next door (which had painted on its sign-board a
negro smoking a cigar) I bought (likewise out of a desire to imitate no
one) some Turkish tobacco, a Stamboul hookah, and two pipes. On coming
out of the shop, I had just entered the drozhki when I caught sight of
Semenoff, who was walking hurriedly along the pavement with his head
bent down. Vexed that he should not have recognised me, I called out
to him pretty loudly, "Hold on a minute!" and, whipping up the drozhki,
soon overtook him.

"How do you do?" I said.

"My respects to you," he replied, but without stopping.

"Why are you not in your University uniform?" I next inquired.

At this he stopped short with a frown, and parted his white teeth as
though the sun were hurting his eyes. The next moment, however, he
threw a glance of studied indifference at my drozhki and uniform, and
continued on his way.

From the Kuznetski Bridge, I drove to a confectioner's in Tverskaia
Street, and, much as I should have liked it to be supposed that it was
the newspapers which most interested me, I had no choice but to begin
falling upon tartlet after tartlet. In fact, for all my bashfulness
before a gentleman who kept regarding me with some curiosity from behind
a newspaper, I ate with great swiftness a tartlet of each of the eight
different sorts which the confectioner kept.

On reaching home, I experienced a slight touch of stomach-ache, but paid
no attention to it, and set to work to inspect my purchases. Of these,
the picture so much displeased me that, instead of having it framed and
hung in my room, as Woloda had done with his, I took pains to hide it
behind a chest of drawers, where no one could see