They had both come to the restaurant straight from a ball and so
were wearing dress coats and white ties. Except them and the waiters
at the door there was not a soul in the room; by Frolov's orders
no one else was admitted.

They began by drinking a big wine-glass of vodka and eating oysters.

"Good!" said Almer. "It was I brought oysters into fashion for the
first course, my boy. The vodka burns and stings your throat and
you have a voluptuous sensation in your throat when you swallow an
oyster. Don't you?"

A dignified waiter with a shaven upper lip and grey whiskers put a
sauceboat on the table.

"What's that you are serving?" asked Frolov.

"Sauce Provençale for the herring, sir. . . ."

"What! is that the way to serve it?" shouted Frolov, not looking
into the sauceboat. "Do you call that sauce? You don't know how to
wait, you blockhead!"

Frolov's velvety eyes flashed. He twisted a corner of the table-cloth
round his finger, made a slight movement, and the dishes, the
candlesticks, and the bottles, all jingling and clattering, fell
with a crash on the floor.

The waiters, long accustomed to pot-house catastrophes, ran up to
the table and began picking up the fragments with grave and unconcerned