to play _vint_ and drink beer.

"My indecision reminds me of Hamlet," thought Laevsky on the way.
"How truly Shakespeare describes it! Ah, how truly!"

III

For the sake of sociability and from sympathy for the hard plight
of newcomers without families, who, as there was not an hotel in
the town, had nowhere to dine, Dr. Samoylenko kept a sort of table
d'hôte. At this time there were only two men who habitually dined
with him: a young zoologist called Von Koren, who had come for the
summer to the Black Sea to study the embryology of the medusa, and
a deacon called Pobyedov, who had only just left the seminary and
been sent to the town to take the duty of the old deacon who had
gone away for a cure. Each of them paid twelve roubles a month for
their dinner and supper, and Samoylenko made them promise to turn
up at two o'clock punctually.

Von Koren was usually the first to appear. He sat down in the
drawing-room in silence, and taking an album from the table, began
attentively scrutinising the faded photographs of unknown men in
full trousers and top-hats, and ladies in crinolines and caps.
Samoylenko only remembered a few of them by name, and of those whom
he had forgotten he said with a sigh: "A very fine fellow, remarkably
intelligent!" When he had finished with the album, Von Koren took
a pistol from the whatnot, and screwing up his left eye, took
deliberate aim at the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, or stood still
at the looking-glass and gazed a long time at his swarthy face, his
big forehead, and his black hair, which curled like a negro's, and