'I see, gentlemen, you don't care for the agreeable, and cling solely
to the profitable. As you please! We groped our way through a dark and
narrow passage to Kolosov's room; we went in. You have most likely an
approximate idea of what a poor student's room is like. Directly facing
the door Kolosov was sitting on a chest of drawers, smoking a pipe. He
gave his hand to Bobov in a friendly way, and greeted me affably. I
looked at Kolosov and at once felt irresistibly drawn to him.
Gentlemen! Bobov was right: Kolosov really was a remarkable person. Let
me describe a little more in detail.... He was rather tall, slender,
graceful, and exceedingly good-looking. His face...I find it very
difficult to describe his face. It is easy to describe all the features
one by one; but how is one to convey to any one else what constitutes
the distinguishing characteristic, the essence of just _that_ face?'

'What Byron calls "the music of the face,"' observed a tightly
buttoned-up, pallid gentleman.

'Quite so.... And therefore I will confine myself to a single remark:
the especial "something" to which I have just referred consisted in
Kolosov's case in a carelessly gay and fearless expression of face, and
also in an exceedingly captivating smile. He did not remember his
parents, and had had a wretched bringing-up in the house of a distant
relative, who had been degraded from the service for taking bribes. Up
to the age of fifteen, he had lived in the country; then he found his
way into Moscow, and after two years spent in the care of an old deaf
priest's wife, he entered the university and began to get his living by
lessons. He gave instruction in history, geography, and Russian
grammar, though he had only a dim notion of these branches of science;
but in the first place, there is an abundance of 'textbooks' among us
in Russia, of the greatest usefulness to teachers; and secondly, the