.."
There also appeared Roly-Poly, who had awakened. Letting his head
drop touchingly to one side and having made little narrowed,
lachrymose, sweet eyes in his wrinkled old face of a Don Quixote,
he was speaking in a persuasively begging tone:
"Gentlemen students ... you ought to treat a little old man. I
love education, by God! ... Allow me!"
Lichonin was glad to see everybody, but Yarchenko in the
beginning--until the champagne had mounted to his head--only
raised high his small, short eyebrows with a timorous, wondering
and naive air. It suddenly became crowded, smoky, noisy and close
in the cabinet. Simeon, with rattling, closed the blinds with
bolts on the outside. The women, just having gotten done with a
visit or in the interim between dances, walked into the room, sat
on somebody's knees, smoked, sang disjointedly, drank wine, kissed
and again went away, and again came. The clerks of Kereshkovsky,
offended because the damsels bestowed more attention upon the
cabinet than the drawing room, did start a row and tried to enter
into a provoking explanation with the students, but Simeon in a
moment quelled them with two or three authoritative words, thrown
out as though in passing.
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