visiting cards in his out-stretched paws; a parquet floor in the
ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains and tulle on the windows,
along the walls white and gold chairs and mirrors with gilt
frames; there are two private cabinets with carpets, divans, and
soft satin puffs; in the bedrooms blue and rose lanterns, blankets
of raw silk stuff and clean pillows; the inmates are clad in low-
cut ball gowns, bordered with fur, or in expensive masquerade
costumes of hussars, pages, fisher lasses, school-girls; and the
majority of them are Germans from the Baltic provinces--large,
handsome women, white of body and with ample breasts. At Treppel's
three roubles are taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten.

Three of the two-rouble establishments--Sophie Vassilievna's, The
Old Kiev, and Anna Markovna's--are somewhat worse, somewhat
poorer. The remaining houses on Great Yamskaya are rouble ones;
they are furnished still worse. While on Little Yamskaya, which is
frequented by soldiers, petty thieves, artisans, and drab folk In
general, and where fifty kopecks or less are taken for time,
things are altogether filthy and poor-the floor in the parlor is
crooked, warped, and full of splinters, the windows are hung with
pieces of red fustian; the bedrooms, just like stalls, are
separated by thin partitions, which do not reach to the ceiling,
and on the beds, on top of the shaken down hay-mattresses, are
scattered torn, spotted bed-sheets and flannel blankets, dark from
time, crumpled any old way, full of holes; the air is sour and
full of fumes, with a mixture of alcohol vapours and the smell of
human emanations; the women, dressed in rags of coloured printed
calico or in sailor costumes, are for the greater part hoarse or
snuffling, with noses half fallen through, with faces preserving
traces of yesterday's blows and scratches and naively bepainted