impossibility of doing any thing; but still I did not give up any
scheme until the last night tour.

The remembrance of that last tour is particularly mortifying to me.
On other occasions I had gone thither alone, but twenty of us went
there on this occasion. At seven o'clock, all who wished to take
part in this final night round, began to assemble at my house.
Nearly all of them were strangers to me,--students, one officer, and
two of my society acquaintances, who, uttering the usual, "C'est tres
interessant!" had asked me to include them in the number of the
census-takers.

My worldly acquaintances had dressed up especially for this, in some
sort of hunting-jacket, and tall, travelling boots, in a costume in
which they rode and went hunting, and which, in their opinion, was
appropriate for an excursion to a night-lodging-house. They took
with them special note-books and remarkable pencils. They were in
that peculiarly excited state of mind in which men set off on a hunt,
to a duel, or to the wars. The most apparent thing about them was
their folly and the falseness of our position, but all the rest of us
were in the same false position. Before we set out, we held a
consultation, after the fashion of a council of war, as to how we
should begin, how divide our party, and so on.

This consultation was exactly such as takes place in councils,
assemblages, committees; that is to say, each person spoke, not
because he had any thing to say or to ask, but because each one
cudgelled his brain for something that he could say, so that he might
not fall short of the rest. But, among all these discussions, no one
alluded to that beneficence of which I had so often spoken to them