Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/42

22 bids you to rob and cheat. It is true, Viérotchka. Well, then, since there is no new order, live in the old way; steal and cheat. I give you my advice because I love you—khrrr."

Marya Alekséyevna was snoring! She was fast asleep.

knew what was spoken at the theatre, but she did not yet know what followed that conversation.

At the very time that she was getting more and more angry with her daughter, and, in consequence of having put too much rum in her punch, was snoring in her daughter's room, Mikhaïl Ivanuitch Storeshnikof was taking supper in a certain fashionable restaurant with the other young gentlemen who had accompanied him to the box.

There was still a fourth person in the company,—a French girl who came with the officer. The supper was almost ended.

"Monsieur Storeshnik."

Storeshnikof felt greatly set up. The French girl addressed him for the third time during the supper.

"Monsieur Storeshnik! Allow me to address you so. It sounds better and is much easier to speak. I did not think that I was going to be the only lady in your company; I hoped to see Adèle here. That would have been charming, I see her so seldom."

"Adèle unfortunately has quarrelled with me."

The officer wanted to say something, but he did not speak.

"Don't believe him, Mademoiselle Julie," said the civilian. "He does not dare to tell you the truth; he thinks that you will not like it when you find out that he has given up a French girl for a Russian."

"I don't know why it was we came here," said the officer.

"Why, yes, Serge; it was because Jean asked us. And it has been very pleasant for me to get acquainted with Monsieur Storeshnikof. No, Monsieur Storeshnikof; fy, what bad taste you show! I should never have said anything if you had deserted Adèle for that Circassian beauty in whose box you were sitting; but to give up a French girl for a Russian! I imagine her: colorless eyes, colorless, thin hair, a vacant, colorless face. I beg pardon; not colorless, but as you call it, blood with cream [krof so slivkami], and by that you mean a dish which only your Esquimaux can take into their