want to crush, to subdue, to attract them, and that I did not care a straw
really for the result, even if I did achieve it. Oh, how I prayed for the day
to pass quickly! In unutterable anguish I went to the window, opened the
movable pane and looked out into the troubled darkness of the thickly
falling wet snow. At last my wretched little clock hissed out five. I seized
my hat and, trying not to look at Apollon, who had been all day
expecting his month's wages, but in his foolishness was unwilling to be
the first to speak about it, I slipped between him and the door and,
jumping into a high-class sledge, on which I spent my last half rouble, I
drove up in grand style to the Hotel de Paris.



IV


I had been certain the day before that I should be the first to arrive. But it
was not a question of being the first to arrive. Not only were they not
there, but I had difficulty in finding our room. The table was not laid
even. What did it mean? After a good many questions I elicited from the
waiters that the dinner had been ordered not for five, but for six o'clock.
This was confirmed at the buffet too. I felt really ashamed to go on
questioning them. It was only twenty-five minutes past five. If they
changed the dinner hour they ought at least to have let me know--that is
what the post is for, and not to have put me in an absurd position in my
own eyes and ... and even before the waiters. I sat down; the servant
began laying the table; I felt even more humiliated when he was present.
Towards six o'clock they brought in candles, though there were lamps
burning in the room. It had not occurred to the waiter, however, to bring
them in at once when I arrived. In the next room two gloomy, angry-