The Party and other stories

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rrived. Krylin, a man of sixty, with a wide mouth and with grey whiskers close to his ears, with a face like a lynx, was wearing a uniform with an Anna ribbon, and

I feel it an agreeable duty, as you see, to present my Christmas wishes to their honoured heiress in spi

h hemp oil; while in Paris he had eaten, so he said, baked but unwashed guts. He spoke smoothly, fluently, without hesitation, and only occasionally, for the sake of effect, permitted himself to hesitate and snap his fingers as if picking up a word. He had long ceased to believe in anything he had to say in the law courts, or perhaps he did believe in it, but attached no kind of significance to it; it had all so long been familiar, stale, ordinary. . . . He believed in nothing but what was original and unusual. A copy-book moral in an original form would move

ry, which he invariably sent for on the first of the month punctually, he used to call “stern prose.” Anna Akimovna knew that when, after her father’s death, the timber of her forest was sold for railway sleepers,

nd kissing both her hands, he lo

nuine disappointment. “I have

mean, Vikto

tn’t,” he repeated in an imploring voice, and kissed her hand. “You are so handsome! You are so splendi

ow Anna Akimovna at your age and not to be

hen I am with her I always feel as though she belongs to some third sex, and I to a fourth, and we float away together into the domain of the subtlest shade

of Duse. Anna Akimovna remembered that the year before Lysevitch and, she fancied, Krylin had dined with her, and now when they were getting ready to go away, she began with perf

betray a noticeable excitement; he rubbed his hands, shrugged his shoulders, screwed up his eyes, and described with feeling what dinners her father and uncle used to give at one time, and a marvellous matelote of turbots the cook here could make: it was not a matelote, but a veritable revelation! He was already gloating over the

dinner, consisting of elaborate holiday dishes, was excellent, and so were the wines. Mishenka waited at table with enthusiasm. When he laid some new dish on the table and lifted the shining cover, or poured

e Lysevitch said, tur

to vegetate, my dear; you ought not to live like every one else, but to get the full savour of life, and a slight flavour of depravity is the sauce of life. Revel among flowers of intoxicating fragrance, breathe the perfume of musk, eat hashi

na Akimovna; she ate nothing

may say, I am convinced, I feel that this waning can only be restored by love in its ordinary sense. It seems to me that such love would define my duties, my work, make clear my conception

all experiences: marriage, and jealousy, and the sweetness of the first infidelity, and even

e. “I will marry in the simplest, most ordinary way and be radiant with happiness. And,

hess. Everything is permissible for you, too, because you are an exceptional woman: if, my dear, you want to love a negro or an Ara

before God. The men who work for me grow blind and deaf. I am afraid to go on like this; I am afraid! I am wretched, and you have the cruelty to talk to me of negroes and . . . and you smile!” Anna Akimovna bro

that if, for the sake of ideas for which I have the deepest respect, you renounce the joys of life and lead a dreary existence, your workmen will be any the better for

had spoken so well, and that her ideas were so fine and just, and she was already c

an to pour o

give advice and know nothing of life yourself. According to you, if a man be a mechanic or a draughtsman

or emphasis (he had been sitting upright as a post, and had been eating steadily the whol

their qualities,” the lawyer mutt

not like, as the expression of an insipid and unoriginal character; besides, the memory of certain of his love affairs of which he was now ashamed was associated with such lanterns. Anna Akimovna’s study with its bare walls and tasteless furniture pleased him exceedingly. It was snug an

own stories; and she listened to him and thought every time that for such enjoyment it was worth paying not only twelve thousand, but three times that sum, and forgave him everything she disliked in him.

,” he said when she asked him to tell her somet

g you to tell m

ny use for you or me. Of course, it is bound to be such as it is, and to refuse to recognize it is to refuse to recognize — would mean refusing to recog

itch shifted in his seat. “A wonderful artist! A terrible, prodigious, supernatural artist!” Lysevitch got up from the sofa and raised his right arm. “Maupassant!” he said rapturously. “My dear, read Maupassant! one page of his gives you more than all the riches of the earth! Every line is a new horizon. The softest, tenderest impulses of the soul alternate with violent tempestuous sensations; your soul, as though under the weight of forty thousand atmospheres, is transformed into th

nd paced from corner to co

, intoxicated me! But I am afraid you will not care for it. To be carried away by it you must s

e laughed with delight at one moment in a deep bass, and at another, on a high shrill note, clasped his hands and clutched at his head with an expression which suggested that it was just going to burst. Anna Akimovna listened enthralled, though she had already read the novel, and it seemed to her ever so much finer and more subtle in the lawyer’s version than in the book itself. He drew her attention to various subtleties, and emphasized the felicitous expressions and the profound

story, Lysevitch sat do

but why am I forty-two instead of thirty? Your tastes and mine do not coincide: you ought to be depraved, and I have long passed that phase, an

omething abstract, existing outside real life. Now he assured himself that he loved Anna Akimovna platonically, ideally, though he did not know what those words meant. But he felt comfortable, snug

and said in the tone commonly

why have you

? Wh

Christmas pre

wyer, and now she was at a loss how much to give him. But she must give him som

it,” she said, “but it is no

d when she brought that ungrateful money and gave it to the lawyer, and he put it in his coat pocket with indolent grace, the whole inci

aid, and kiss

ssful, sleepy face, but

ovna was a little embarrassed. . . . She had utterly forgotten in what department Krylin served, and whether s

erve?” she whisp

,” muttered Lys

ad been charitable at their expense, serving in some charitable institution. As she said good-bye she slipped three hundred roubles into

na Akimovna, you can only

p and heavy, and he staggered wh

ast stage of exhaustion, and it was evident that he

erience a feeling as though some unseen force were drawing you out longer and longer? You are drawn out and turn into the fi

e top of the stairs, saw each

she called to them, an

-gown, and ran downstairs; and as she ran downstairs she laughed and thumped with