Chapter 39 - Page 2

Frost?"

"Oh ja!" replied Frost with a joyful flourish of his heels, and
the other went on:

"Then do you set about it" (they addressed each other in the
second person singular, as former comrades at Dorpat). Frost
accordingly departed to the dining-room, with great strides of
his bowed, muscular legs, and, after some walking backwards and
forwards, deposited upon the drawing-room table a large
punchbowl, accompanied by a ten-pound sugar loaf supported on
three students' swords placed crosswise. Meanwhile, the Baron had
been going round among his guests as they sat regarding the
punch-bowl, and addressing them, with a face of immutable
gravity, in the formula: "I beg of you all to drink of this
loving-cup in student fashion, that there may be good-fellowship
among the members of our course. Unbutton your waistcoats, or
take them off altogether, as you please." Already the Dorpat
student had divested himself of his tunic and rolled up his
white shirt-sleeves above his elbows, and now, planting his
feet firmly apart, he proceeded to set fire to the rum in the
punch-bowl.

"Gentlemen, put out the candles!" he cried with a sudden shout so
loud and insistent that we seemed all of us to be shouting at
once. However, we still went on silently regarding the punch-bowl
and the white shirt of the Dorpat student, with a feeling that a
moment of great solemnity was approaching.

"Put out the lights, Frost, I tell you!" the Dorpat student
shouted again. Evidently the punch was now sufficiently burnt.
Accordingly every one helped to extinguish the candles, until the
room was in total darkness save for a spot where the white shirts
and hands of the three students supporting the sugarloaf on their
crossed swords were lit up by the lurid flames from the bowl. Yet
the Dorpat student's tenor voice was not the only one to be
heard, for in different quarters of the room resounded chattering
and laughter. Many had taken off their tunics (especially
students whose garments were of fine cloth and perfectly new),
and I now did the same, with a consciousness that "IT" was
"beginning." There had been no great festivity as yet, but I felt
assured that things would go splendidly when once we had begun
drinking tumblers of the potion that was now in course of
preparation.

At length, the punch was ready, and the Dorpat student, with much
bespattering of the table as he did so, ladled the liquor into
tumblers, and cried: "Now, gentlemen, please!" When we had each
of us taken a sticky tumbler of the stuff into our hands, the
Dorpat student and Frost sang a German song in which the word
"Hoch!" kept