with the aid of a red cigarette box moistened with spit.

All the year round, every evening--with the exception of the last
three days of Holy Week and the night before Annunciation, when no
bird builds its nest and a shorn wench does not plait her braid--
when it barely grows dark out of doors, hanging red lanterns are
lit before every house, above the tented, carved street doors. It
is just like a holiday out on the street--like Easter. All the
windows are brightly lit up, the gay music of violins and pianos
floats out through the panes, cabmen drive up and drive off
without cease. In all the houses the entrance doors are opened
wide, and through them one may see from the street a steep
staircase with a narrow corridor on top, and the white flashing of
the many-facetted reflector of the lamp, and the green walls of
the front hall, painted over with Swiss landscapes. Till the very
morning hundreds and thousands of men ascend and descend these
staircases. Here everybody frequents: half-shattered, slavering
ancients, seeking artificial excitements, and boys-military cadets
and high-school lads--almost children; bearded paterfamiliases;
honourable pillars of society, in goldon spectacles; and newly-
weds, and enamoured bridegrooms, and honourable professors with
renowned names; and thieves, and murderers, and liberal lawyers;
and strict guardians of morals--pedagogues, and foremost writers--
the authors of fervent, impassioned articles on the equal rights
of women; and catchpoles, and spies, and escaped convicts, and
officers, and students, and Social Democrats, and hired patriots;
the timid and the brazen, the sick and the well, those knowing
woman for the first time, and old libertines frayed by all species
of vice; clear-eyed, handsome fellows and monsters maliciously
distorted by nature, deaf-mutes, blind men, men without noses,