He laughed again.

"The trouble is," the prince reflected for a moment, "that you want to wait till they disperse, but God knows when that will be. Wouldn't it be better to go down to the park now? They'll wait, really; I'll apologize."

"No, no, I have my reasons for not arousing the suspicion that we are having an urgent conversation with some purpose; there are people here who are very interested in our relations—don't you know that, Prince? And it will be much better if they see that they are the most friendly relations, and not merely urgent ones—you understand? They'll leave in a couple of hours; I'll take about twenty minutes of your time—maybe half an hour . . ."

"You're most welcome, please stay. I'm very glad even without explanations; and thank you very much for your kind words about our friendly relations. You must forgive me for being absentminded tonight; you know, I simply cannot be attentive at the moment."

"I see, I see," Evgeny Pavlovich murmured with a slight smile. He laughed very easily that evening.

"What do you see?" the prince roused himself up.

"And don't you suspect, dear Prince," Evgeny Pavlovich went on smiling, without answering the direct question, "don't you suspect that I've simply come to hoodwink you and, incidentally, to worm something out of you, eh?"

"There's no doubt at all that you've come to worm something out of me," the prince finally laughed, too, "and it may even be that you've decided to deceive me a bit. But so what? I'm not afraid of you; what's more, it somehow makes no difference to me now, can you believe that? And . . . and . . . and since I'm convinced before all that you are still an excellent person, we may indeed end by becoming friends. I like you very much, Evgeny Pavlych; in my opinion, you're ... a very, very decent man!"

"Well, in any case it's very nice dealing with you, even in whatever it may be," Evgeny Pavlovich concluded. "Come, I'll drink a glass to your health; I'm terribly pleased to have joined you here. Ah!" he suddenly stopped, "has this gentleman Ippolit come to live with you?"

"Yes."

"He's not going to die at once, I suppose?"

"Why?"

"No, nothing; I spent half an hour with him here . . ."

All this time Ippolit was waiting for the prince and constantly glancing at him and Evgeny Pavlovich, while they stood aside talking. He became feverishly animated as they approached the table. He was restless and agitated; sweat broke out on his forehead. His eyes, along with a sort of roving, continual restlessness, also showed a certain vague impatience; his gaze moved aimlessly from object to object, from person to person. Though up to then he had taken great part in the general noisy conversation, his animation was only feverish; he paid no attention to the conversation itself; his arguments were incoherent, ironic, and carelessly paradoxical; he did not finish and dropped something he himself had begun saying a moment earlier with feverish ardor. The prince learned with surprise and regret that he had been allowed, unhindered, to

drink two full glasses of champagne that evening, and that the glass he had started on, which stood before him, was already the third. But he learned it only later; at the present moment he was not very observant.

"You know, I'm terribly glad that precisely today is your birthday!" cried Ippolit.

"Why?"

"You'll see. Sit down quickly. First of all, because all these . . . your people have gathered. I reckoned there would be people; for the first time in my life my reckoning came out right! Too bad I didn't know about your birthday, or I'd have come with a present . . . Ha, ha! Maybe I did come with a present! Is it long before daylight?"

"It's less than two hours till dawn," Ptitsyn said, looking at his watch.

"Who needs the dawn, if you can read outside as it is?" someone observed.

"It's because I need to see the rim of the sun. Can one drink the sun's health, Prince, what do you think?"

Ippolit asked abruptly, addressing everyone without ceremony, as if he were in command, but he seemed not to notice it himself.

"Perhaps so; only you ought to calm down, eh, Ippolit?"

"You're always talking about sleep; you're my nanny, Prince! As soon as the sun appears and 'resounds' in the sky (who said that in a poem: 'the sun resounded in the sky'?⁸ It's meaningless, but good!)—we'll go to bed. Lebedev! Is the sun the wellspring of life? What are the 'wellsprings of life' in the Apocalypse? Have you heard of 'the star Wormwood,'⁹ Prince?"

"I've heard that Lebedev thinks this 'star Wormwood' is the network of railways spread over Europe."

"No, excuse me, sir, that's not it, sir!" Lebedev cried, jumping up and waving his arms, as if wishing to stop the general laughter that was beginning. "Excuse me, sir! With these gentlemen ... all these gentlemen," he suddenly turned to the prince, "in certain points, it's like this, sir . . ." and he unceremoniously rapped the table twice, which increased the laughter still more.

Lebedev, though in his usual "evening" state, was much too agitated and irritated this time by the preceding long "learned" argument, and on such occasions his attitude towards his opponents was one of boundless and highly candid contempt.

"That's not it, sir! Half an hour ago, Prince, we made an

agreement not to interrupt; not to laugh while someone is talking; to allow him to say everything freely, and then let the atheists object if they want to; we made the general our chairman, so we did, sir! Or else what, sir? Or else anybody can get thrown off, even with the highest idea, sir, even with the deepest idea . . ."

"Well, speak, speak: nobody's throwing you off!" voices rang out.

"Speak, but not through your hat."

"What is this 'star Wormwood'?" somebody asked.

"I have no idea!" General Ivolgin answered, taking his recently appointed place as chairman with an air of importance.

"I have a remarkable fondness for all these arguments and irritations, Prince—learned ones, naturally," murmured Keller, meanwhile stirring on his chair in decided rapture and impatience, "learned and political ones," he turned suddenly and unexpectedly to Evgeny Pavlovich, who was sitting almost next to him. "You know, I'm terribly fond of reading about the English Parliaments in the newspapers, that is, not in the sense of what they discuss (I'm no politician, you know), but of the way they discuss things together, and behave, so to speak, like politicians: 'the noble viscount sitting opposite me,' 'the noble earl, who shares my thinking,' 'my noble opponent, who has astonished Europe with his proposal,' that is, all those little expressions, all that parliamentarianism of a free nation—that's what our sort finds attractive! I'm captivated, Prince. I've always been an artist in the depths of my soul, I swear to you, Evgeny Pavlych."

"So then," Ganya was seething in another corner, "it turns out, in your opinion, that the railways are cursed, that they're the bane of mankind, a plague that has fallen upon the earth to muddy the 'wellsprings of life'?"¹⁰

Gavrila Ardalionovich was in a particularly agitated mood that evening, a merry, almost triumphant mood, as it seemed to the prince. He was, of course, joking with Lebedev, egging him on, but soon he became excited himself.