Chapter 16 - Page 2

cigarette--which had meanwhile gone out--
to our own room.

I said nothing, either to my brother or my friends, about what
had happened (and the more so because they were at that moment
engaged in a dispute of their own), but sat down in a corner to
think over the strange affair. The words, "You are a cad, young
sir," vexed me more and more the longer that they sounded in my
ears. My tipsiness was gone now, and, in considering my conduct
during the dispute, the uncomfortable thought came over me that I
had behaved like a coward.

"Yet what right had he to attack me?" I reflected. "Why did he
not simply intimate to me that I was annoying him? After all, it
may have been he that was in the wrong. Why, too, when he called
me a young cad, did I not say to him, 'A cad, my good sir, is one
who takes offence'? Or why did I not simply tell him to hold his
tongue? That would have been the better course. Or why did I not
challenge him to a duel? No, I did none of those things, but
swallowed his insults like a wretched coward."

Still the words, "You are a cad, young sir," kept sounding in my
ears with maddening iteration. "I cannot leave things as they
are," I at length decided as I rose to my feet with the fixed
intention of returning to the gentleman and saying something
outrageous to him--perhaps, also, of breaking the candelabrum
over his head if occasion offered. Yet, though I considered the
advisability of this last measure with some pleasure, it was not
without a good deal of trepidation that I re-entered the main
salon. As luck would have it, M. Kolpikoff was no longer there,
but only a waiter engaged in clearing the table. For a moment I
felt like telling the waiter the whole story, and explaining to
him my innocence in the matter, but for some reason or another I
thought better of it, and once more returned, in the same hazy
condition of mind, to our own room.

"What has become of our DIPLOMAT?" Dubkoff was just saying. "Upon
him now hang the fortunes of Europe."

"Oh, leave me alone," I said, turning moodily away. Then, as I
paced the room, something made me begin to think that Dubkoff was
not altogether a good fellow. "There is nothing very much to
admire in his eternal jokes and his nickname of 'DIPLOMAT,'" I
reflected. "All he thinks about is to win money from Woloda and
to go and see his 'Auntie.' There is nothing very nice in all
that. Besides, everything he says has a touch of blackguardism in
it, and he is forever trying to make people laugh. In my opinion
he is simply stupid when he is not absolutely a brute." I spent
about five minutes in these reflections, and felt my