to start the vibration in the air known as sound?'

'Don't tempt me, I tell you,' groaned Uvar Ivanovitch.

Shubin laughed and ran away. 'Hi,' shouted Uvar Ivanovitch a quarter
of an hour later, 'you there ... a glass of spirits.'

A little page brought the glass of spirits and some salt fish on a
tray. Uvar Ivanovitch slowly took the glass from the tray and gazed a
long while with intense attention at it, as though he could not quite
understand what it was he had in his hand. Then he looked at the page
and asked him, 'Wasn't his name Vaska?' Then he assumed an air of
resignation, drank off the spirit, munched the herring and was slowly
proceeding to get his handkerchief out of his pocket. But the page had
long ago carried off and put away the tray and the decanter, eaten up
the remains of the herring and had time to go off to sleep, curled up
in a great-coat of his master's, while Uvar Ivanovitch still
continued to hold the handkerchief before him in his opened fingers,
and with the same intense attention gazed now at the window, now at
the floor and walls.




IX


Shubin went back to his room in the lodge and was just opening a book,
when Nikolai Artemyevitch's valet came cautiously into his room and
handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic