Thus matters stood, while in town people still went on believing in a Belshazzar's feast—that is, in the committee buffet; they believed in it to the last hour. Even the young ladies dreamed of quantities of candies and preserves and other unheard-of things. Everyone knew that the collection realized was abundant, that the whole town would be storming the doors, that people were coming in from the country, and there were not enough tickets. It was also known that beyond the fixed price there had also been considerable donations: Varvara Petrovna, for example, had paid three hundred roubles for her ticket and provided all the flowers from her greenhouse to decorate the hall. The marshal's wife (a committee member) provided her house and the lighting; the club provided the music and servants, and released Prokhorych for the whole day. There were other donations, though not such big ones, so that there was even a thought of lowering the original ticket price from three roubles to two. The committee indeed feared at first that the young ladies would not come for three roubles, and suggested arranging family tickets somehow—namely, by asking each family to pay for just one young lady, while all other young ladies of the same name, even an edition of ten, would come free. But all fears proved groundless: on the contrary, it was precisely the young ladies who did come. Even the poorest officials brought their girls, and it was only too clear that if they had not had girls, it would never have occurred to them to subscribe. One most insignificant secretary brought all seven of his daughters, not to mention his wife, of course, and also his niece, and each of these persons held a three-rouble entrance ticket in her hand. One can imagine, however, what a revolution went on in town! Take merely the fact that the fête was divided into two parts, and thus for each lady two costumes were necessary—a morning gown for the reading, and a ball gown for the dancing. Many of the middle class, it turned out later, pawned everything for that day, even the family linen, even their sheets and almost their mattresses, to the local Jews, who, over the past two years, as if on purpose, had been settling in terrible quantities in our town, and keep coming more and more. Almost all the officials took an advance on their salaries, and some landowners sold much-needed cattle, and all this just so as to bring their young ladies looking like real marquises, and to be no worse than others. The magnificence of the costumes this time was, considering the place, unheard-of. Two weeks beforehand the town was already stuffed with family anecdotes, all of which were immediately carried to Yulia Mikhailovna's court by our witlings. Family caricatures were passed around. I myself saw several drawings of this sort in Yulia Mikhailovna's album. All this became only too well known there where the anecdotes originated; that, it seems to me, is why such hatred for Yulia Mikhailovna had built up lately in these families. Now they all curse and gnash their teeth when they recall it. But it was clear beforehand that if the committee should fail to please in some way, were the ball to go amiss somehow, there would be an unheard-of outburst of indignation. That is why everyone was secretly expecting a scandal; and if it was so expected, how then could it not take place? At noon precisely the orchestra struck up. Being one of the ushers, that is, one of the twelve "young men with a bow," I saw with my own eyes how this day of infamous memory began. It began with a boundless crush at the entrance. How did it happen that everything went amiss from the very first, beginning with the police? I do not blame the real public: fathers of families not only were not crowding each other or anyone else, even despite their rank, but, on the contrary, are said to have been abashed while still in the street at the sight, unusual for our town, of the shoving mob that was besieging the entrance and trying to force it, instead of simply going in. Meanwhile, carriages kept driving up and finally blocked the street. Now, as I write, I have solid grounds for affirming that some of the vilest scum of our town were simply brought in without tickets by Lyamshin and Liputin, and perhaps also by someone else who, like me, was one of the ushers. Anyway, even completely unknown persons appeared, who came from other districts and elsewhere. The moment these savages entered the hall, they would go at once to inquire, in the same words (as if they had been prompted), where the buffet was, and on learning that there was no buffet, would begin swearing without any politics and with a boldness hitherto unusual among us. True, some of them came drunk.
Some were struck, like savages, by the magnificence of the marshal's wife's reception hall, since they had never seen anything like it, and, on entering, would become hushed for a moment and gaze around openmouthed. This big White Hall, despite its already decrepit structure, was indeed magnificent: of huge dimensions, with windows on both sides, with a ceiling decorated in the old manner and trimmed with gold, with galleries, with mirrors between the windows, with red and white draperies, with marble statues (such as they were, still they were statues), with heavy old furniture of the Napoleonic era, gilt white and upholstered in red velvet. At the moment described here, a high platform rose up at the end of the hall for the writers who were to read, and the entire room was completely filled with chairs, like the parterre of a theater, with wide aisles for the public. But after the first moments of astonishment, the most senseless questions and declarations would begin. "Maybe we don't even want any reading... We paid money... The public has been brazenly deceived... We're the masters, not the Lembkas! ..." In a word, as though it were for just this that they had been let in. I recall particularly one confrontation in which yesterday's visiting princeling distinguished himself, the one who had been at Yulia Mikhailovna's the previous morning, in his standing collar, and looking like a wooden doll. He, too, at her relentless request, had agreed to pin a bow to his left shoulder and become our fellow usher. It turned out that this mute wax figure on springs knew, if not how to speak, then at least, after a fashion, how to act. When one pockmarked, colossal retired captain, supported by a whole crew of various scum crowding at his back, began to pester him about "where to get to the buffet"—he winked to a policeman. The directive was promptly fulfilled: in spite of his swearing, the drunken captain was dragged out of the hall. Meanwhile, the "real" public also began finally to appear and in three long lines threaded its way down the three aisles between the chairs. The disorderly element began to quiet down, but the public, even the "cleanest" part of it, had a displeased and amazed look; some of the ladies were quite simply frightened.