cheeks and making round eyes, blows up the censer. The hall is
gradually filled with bluish transparent smoke and the smell of
incense.

Gelikonsky, the elementary schoolmaster, a young man with big pimples
on his frightened face, wearing a new greatcoat like a sack, carries
round wax candles on a silver-plated tray. The hostess, Lyubov
Petrovna, stands in the front by a little table with a dish of
funeral rice on it, and holds her handkerchief in readiness to her
face. There is a profound stillness, broken from time to time by
sighs. Everybody has a long, solemn face. . . .

The requiem service begins. The blue smoke curls up from the censer
and plays in the slanting sunbeams, the lighted candles faintly
splutter. The singing, at first harsh and deafening, soon becomes
quiet and musical as the choir gradually adapt themselves to the
acoustic conditions of the rooms. . . . The tunes are all mournful
and sad. . . . The guests are gradually brought to a melancholy
mood and grow pensive. Thoughts of the brevity of human life, of
mutability, of worldly vanity stray through their brains. . . .
They recall the deceased Zavzyatov, a thick-set, red-cheeked man
who used to drink off a bottle of champagne at one gulp and smash
looking-glasses with his forehead. And when they sing "With Thy
Saints, O Lord," and the sobs of their hostess are audible, the
guests shift uneasily from one foot to the other. The more emotional
begin to feel a tickling in their throat and about their eyelids.
Marfutkin, the president of the Zemstvo, to stifle the unpleasant
feeling, bends down to the police captain's ear and whispers:

"I was at Ivan Fyodoritch's yesterday. . . . Pyotr Petrovitch and