Chapter XII - Page 2

with brutal jocularity. "You had better come with us. What's the good of being always alone?"

Feeling sad and dispirited, Yourii did not find Sanine and Ivanoff as distasteful to him as usual.

"Very well, I will," he replied, but suddenly recollecting his superiority, he thought to himself, "what have I really in common with such fellows? Am I to drink their vodka, and talk commonplaces?"

He was on the point of turning back, but he felt such an utter horror of solitude that he went along with them. Ivanoff and Sanine proffered no remarks, and thus in silence they reached the former's lodging. It was already quite dark. At the door, the figure of a man could be dimly seen. He had a thick stick with a crooked handle.

"Oh! it's Uncle Peter Ilitsch!" exclaimed Ivanoff gleefully.

"Yes! that's he!" replied the figure, in a deep, resonant voice. Yourii remembered that Ivanoff's uncle was an old, drunken church chorister. He had a grey moustache like one of the soldiers at the time of Nicholas the First, and his shabby black coat had a most unpleasant smell.

"Boum! Boum!" His voice seemed to come out of a barrel, when Ivanoff introduced him to Yourii, who awkwardly shook hands with him, hardly knowing what to say to such a person. He recollected, however, that for him all men should be equal, so he politely gave precedence to the old singer as they went in.

Ivanoff's lodging was more like an old lumber-room than a place for human habitation, being very dusty and untidy. But when his host had lighted the lamp, Yourii perceived that the walls were covered with engravings of pictures by Vasnetzoff, and that what had seemed rubbish were books piled up in heaps. He still felt somewhat ill at ease, and, to hide this, he began to examine the engravings attentively.

"Do you like Vasnetzoff?" asked Ivanoff as, without waiting for an answer, he left the room to fetch a plate. Sanine told Peter Ilitsch that Semenoff was dead. "God rest his soul!" droned the latter. "Ah! well, it's all over for him now."

Yourii glanced wistfully at him, and felt a sudden sympathy for the old man.

Ivanoff now brought in bread, salted cucumbers, and glasses, which he placed on the table that was covered with a newspaper. Then, with a swift, scarcely perceptible movement, he uncorked the bottle, not a drop of its contents being spilt.

"Very neat!" exclaimed Ilitsch approvingly.

"You can tell in a minute if a man knows what he's about," said Ivanoff, with a self-complacent air, as he filled the glasses with the greenish liquid.

"Now gentlemen," said he, raising his voice as he took up his glass. "To the repose of the departed, &c.!"

With that they began to eat, and more vodka was consumed. They talked