e, you can be wicked too if you like! However, you are also
coming to Golushkin's, are you not?"

"Of course I am. I have wasted the day as it is."

"Well then, en avant, marchons! To the twentieth century! To the
twentieth century! Nejdanov, you are an advanced man, lead the way!"

"Very well, come along; only don't keep on repeating the same jokes lest
we should think you are running short."

"I have still enough left for you, my dear friends," Paklin said gaily
and went on ahead, not by leaping, but by limping, as he said.

"What an amusing man!" Solomin remarked as he was walking along
arm-in-arm with Nejdanov; "if we should ever be sent to Siberia, which
Heaven forbid, there will be someone to entertain us at any rate."

Markelov walked in silence behind the others.

Meanwhile great preparations were going on at Golushkin's to produce
a "chic" dinner. (Golushkin, as a man of the highest European culture,
kept a French cook, who had formerly been dismissed from a club for
dirtiness.) A nasty, greasy fish soup was prepared, various pates chauds
and fricasses and, most important of all, several bottles of champagne
had been procured and put into ice.

The host met the young people with his characteristic awkwardness,
bustle, and much giggling. He was delighted to see Paklin as the latter
had predicted and asked of him--

"Is he one of us? Of course he is! I need not have asked," he said,
without waiting for a reply. He began telling them how he had just come
from that "old fogey" the governor, and how the latter worried him to
death about some sort of charity institution. It was difficult to say
what satisfied Golushkin most, the fact that he was received at the
governor's, or that he was able to abuse that worth before these
advanced, young men. Then he introduced them to the promised proselyte,
who turned out to be no other than the sleek consumptive individual
with the long neck whom they had seen in the morning, Vasia, Golushkin's
clerk. "He hasn't much to say," Golushkin declared, "but is devoted
heart and soul to our cause." To this Vasia bowed, blushed, blinked his
eyes, and grinned in such a manner that it was impossible to say whether
he was merely a vulgar fool or an out-and-out knave and blackguard.

"Well, gentlemen, let us go to dinner," Golushkin exclaimed.

They partook of various kinds of salt fish to give them an appetite and
sat down to the table. Directly after the soup, Golushkin ordered