Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/266

Rh 'In fact, you want to jump out of window?'

'I'll jump out!' clamoured Golushkin. 'I will! and so'll Vasya! If I tell him, he'll jump out! Eh, Vasya? You'd jump, wouldn't you?'

The clerk drank off a glass of champagne.

'Where you lead, Kapiton Andreitch, there I follow. I shouldn't dare think twice about it.'

'You'd better not! I'd twist you into a ram's horn.'

Before long there followed what in the language of drunkards is known as a 'regular Babel.' A mighty clamour and uproar arose.

Like the first flakes of snow, swiftly whirling, crossing and recrossing in the still mild air of autumn, words began flying, tumbling, jostling against one another in the heated atmosphere of Golushkin's dining-room─words of all sorts─progress, government, literature; the taxation question, the church question, the woman question, the law-court question; classicism, realism, nihilism, communism; international, clerical, liberal, capital; administration, organisation, association, and even crystallisation! It was just this uproar which seemed to rouse Golushkin to enthusiasm; the real gist of the matter seemed to consist in this, for him.