Chapter 44 - Page 2

with pale, haggard face and
tremulous hands, and passed brilliantly into the second course!

The company of roisterers of which Zuchin had been the leader
since its formation at the beginning of the term consisted of
eight students, among whom, at first, had been numbered Ikonin
and Semenoff; but the former had left under the strain of the
continuous revelry in which the band had indulged in the early
part of the term, and the latter seceded later for reasons which
were never wholly explained. In its early days this band had been
looked upon with awe by all the fellows of our course, and had
had its exploits much discussed. Of these exploits the leading
heroes had been Zuchin and, towards the end of the term,
Semenoff, but the latter had come to be generally shunned, and to
cause disturbances on the rare occasions when he attended a
lecture. Just before the examinations began, he rounded off his
drinking exploits in a most energetic and original fashion, as I
myself had occasion to witness (through my acquaintanceship with
Zuchin). This is how it was. One evening we had just assembled at
Zuchin's, and Operoff, reinforcing a candlestick with a candle
stuck in a bottle, had just plunged his nose into his notebooks
and begun to read aloud in his thin voice from his neatly-written
notes on physics, when the landlady entered the room, and
informed Zuchin that some one had brought a note for him . .
.[The remainder of this chapter is omitted in the original.]