fundamentally--to the last drop of his blood; but even in his
ambitions he was petty and did not rely on himself, but was building
his career on the chance favour flung him by his superiors. For the
sake of obtaining some foreign decoration, or for the sake of having
his name mentioned in the newspapers as having been present at some
special service in the company of other great personages, he was
ready to submit to any kind of humiliation, to beg, to flatter, to
promise. He flattered Orlov and Pekarsky from cowardice, because
he thought they were powerful; he flattered Polya and me because
we were in the service of a powerful man. Whenever I took off his
fur coat he tittered and asked me: "Stepan, are you married?" and
then unseemly vulgarities followed--by way of showing me special
attention. Kukushkin flattered Orlov's weaknesses, humoured his
corrupted and blasé ways; to please him he affected malicious
raillery and atheism, in his company criticised persons before whom
in other places he would slavishly grovel. When at supper they
talked of love and women, he pretended to be a subtle and perverse
voluptuary. As a rule, one may say, Petersburg rakes are fond of
talking of their abnormal tastes. Some young actual civil councillor
is perfectly satisfied with the embraces of his cook or of some
unhappy street-walker on the Nevsky Prospect, but to listen to him
you would think he was contaminated by all the vices of East and
West combined, that he was an honourary member of a dozen iniquitous
secret societies and was already marked by the police. Kukushkin
lied about himself in an unconscionable way, and they did not exactly
disbelieve him, but paid little heed to his incredible stories.

The third guest was Gruzin, the son of a worthy and learned general;
a man of Orlov's age, with long hair, short-sighted eyes, and gold
spectacles. I remember his long white fingers, that looked like a