DI
Having drunk two glasses of porter, the artist became suddenly tipsy and grew unnaturally lively.
"Let's go to another!" he said peremptorily, waving his arms. "I will take you to the best one."
When he had brought his friends to the house which in his opinion was the best, he declared his firm intention of dancing a quadrille. The medical student grumbled something about their having to pay the musicians a ruble, but agreed to be his vis-a-vis. They began dancing.
It was just as nasty in the best house as in the worst.
Here there were just the same looking-glasses and pic- tures, the same styles of coiffure and dress. Looking round at the furnishing of the rooms and the costumes, Vasilyev realized that this was not lack of taste, but something that might be called the taste, and even the
style, of S Street, which could not be found else-
where—something integral in its ugliness, not acciden- tal, but elaborated in the course of years. After he had been in eight houses he was no longer surprised at the color of the dresses, at the long trains, the gaudy bows, the sailor dresses, and the thick purplish rouge on the cheeks; he saw that it all had to be like this, that if a single one of the women had been dressed like a human being, or if there had been one decent engraving on the wall, the general tone of the whole street would have suffered.
"How unskillfully they seU themselves!" he thought. "How can they fail to understand that vice is only allur- ing when it is beautiful and hidden, when it wears the mask of virtue? Modest black dresses, pale faces, mourn- ful smiles, and darkness would be far more effective than this clumsy tinsel. Stupid things! If they don't un- derstand it of themselves, their visitors might surely have taught them. . . ."
A young lady in a Polish dress edged with white fur came up to him and sat down beside him.
"You nice dark man, why aren't you dancing?" she asked. "Why are you so duU?"
"Because it is dull."
"Treat me to some Lafitte. Then it won't be dull."
Vasilyev made no answer. He was silent for a little, and then asked:
"What time do you get to sleep?"
"At six o'clock."
"And what time do you get up?"
"Sometimes at two and sometimes at three."
"And what do you do when you get up?"
"We have coffee, and at six o'clock we have dinner."
"And what do you have for dinner?"
"Usually soup, beefsteak, and dessert. Our madam keeps the girls well. But why do you ask all this?"
"Oh, just to talk. . . ."
Vasilyev longed to talk to the young lady about many things. He felt an intense desire to find out where she came from, whether her parents were living, and whether they knew that she was here; how she had come into this house; whether she was cheerful and satisfied, or sad and oppressed by gloomy thoughts; whether she hoped some day to get out of her present position. . . . But he could not think how to begin or in what shape to put his questions so as not to seem impertinent. He thought for a long time, and asked:
"How old are you?"
"Eighty," the young lady jested, looking with a laugh at the antics of the artist as he danced.
All at once she burst out laughing at something, and uttered a long cynical sentence loud enough to be heard by everyone. Vasilyev was aghast, and not knowing what kind of a face to put on the matter, gave a con- strained smile. He was the only one who smiled; all the others, his friends, the musicians, the women, did not even glance towards his neighbor, but seemed not to have heard her.
"Stand me some Lafitte," his neighbor said again.
Vasilyev felt a repulsion for her white fur and for her voice, and walked away from her. It seemed to him hot and stifling, and his heart began pounding slowly but violently, like a hammer—one! two! three!
"Let us go away!" he said, pulling the artist by his sleeve.
"Wait a little; let me finish."
While the artist and the medical student were finish- ing the quadrille, to avoid looking at the women, Va- silyev scrutinized the musicians. A respectable-looking old man in spectacles, rather like Marshal Bazaine, was playing the piano; a young man with a fair beard, dressed in the latest fashion, was playing the violin. The young man had a face that did not look stupid or hollow-cheeked, but intelligent, youthful, and fresh. He was dressed fancifully and with taste; he played with feeling. It was a mystery how he and the respectable- looking old man had got here. How was it they were not ashamed to sit here? What were they thinking about when they looked at the women?
If the violin and the piano had been played by men in rags, hungry, gloomy, drunken, with dissipated or stupid faces, then one could have understood their pres- ence, perhaps. As it was, Vasilyev was at a loss to un- derstand it. He recalled the story of the fallen woman he had once read, and he thought now that that human image with the guilty smile had nothing in common with what he was seeing now. It seemed to him that he was seeing not fallen women, but beings belonging to a different world quite apart, alien to him and incompre- hensible; if he had seen this world before on the stage, or read of it in a book, he would not have believed it could exist.
The woman with the white fur burst out laughing again and uttered a loathsome phrase in a loud voice. A feeling of disgust took possession of him. He blushed and went out of the room.
'Wait a minute, we are coming tool" the artist shouted to him.
IV
'While we were dancing," said the medical student, as they all three went out into the street, "I had a con- versation with my partner. We talked about her first romance. He, the hero, was an accountant at Smolensk with a wife and five children. She was seventeen, and she lived with her papa and mamma, who sold soap and candles."
"How did he win her heart?" asked Vasilyev.
"By spending fifty rubles on underwear for her. What the devil!"
"So he knew how to get his partner's story out of her," thought Vasilyev about the medical student. "But I don't know how."
"Gentlemen, I am going home!" he said.
"What for?"
"Because I don't know how to behave here. Besides, I am bored, disgusted. What is there amusing in it? If they were human beings—but they are savages and animals. I am going; do as you like."
"Come, Grisha, Grigory, darling . • ." said the artist in a tearful voice, hugging Vasilyev, "come along! Let's go to one more together and damnation take them! . . . Please do, Grisha!"
They persuaded Vasilyev and led him up a staircase. In the carpet and the gilt banisters, in the doorman who opened the door, and in the panels that decorated the
hall, the same S Street style was apparent, but
carried to a greater perfection, more imposing.
"I really will go home!" said Vasilyev as he was tak- ing off his coat.
"Come, come, dear boy," said the artist, and he kissed him on the neck. "Don't be tiresome. . . . Gri- gri, be a good comrade! We came together, we will go
back together. What a beast you are, really!"
"I can wait for you in the street. I think it's loathsome here, really!"
"Come, come, Grisha. . . . If it is loathsome, ob- serve it! Do you understand? Observe!"