Is such a supposition pleasant?”
“Yes, but there must exist some valves for the passions of society,” pompously remarked Boris Sobashnikov, a tall, somewhat supercilious and affected young man, upon whom the short, white summer uniform jacket, which scarcely covered his fat posteriors, the modish trousers, of a military cut, the pince-nez on a broad, black ribbon, and a cap after a Prussian model, all bestowed the air of a coxcomb. “Surely, it isn’t more respectable to enjoy the caresses of your chambermaid, or to carry on an intrigue on the side with another man’s wife?
What am I to do if woman is indispensable to me!”
“Eh, very indispensable indeed!” said Yarchenko with vexation and feebly made a despondent gesture.
But here a student who was called Ramses in the friendly coterie intervened.
This was a yellowish-swarthy, hump-nosed man of small stature; his clean-shaven face seemed triangular, thanks to a broad forehead, beginning to get bald, with two wedge-like bald spots at the temples, fallen-in cheeks and a sharp chin.
He led a mode of life sufficiently queer for a student.
While his colleagues employed themselves by turns with politics, love, the theatre, and a little in study, Ramses had withdrawn entirely into the study of all conceivable suits and claims, into the chicane subtleties of property, hereditary, land and other business law-suits, into the memorizing and logical analysis of quashed decisions.
Perfectly of his own will, without in the least needing the money, he served for a year as a clerk at a notary’s for another as a secretary to a justice of the peace, while all of the past year, being in the last term, he had conducted in a local newspaper the reports of the city council and had borne the modest duty of an assistant to a secretary in the management of a syndicate of sugar manufacturers.
And when this same syndicate commenced the well-known suit against one of its members, Colonel Baskakov, who had put up the surplus sugar for sale contrary to agreement, Ramses from the very beginning guessed beforehand and very subtly engineered, precisely that decision which the senate subsequently handed down in this suit.
Despite his comparative youth, rather well-known jurists gave heed to his opinions— true, a little loftily.
None of those who knew Ramses closely doubted that he would make a brilliant career, and even Ramses himself did not conceal his confidence in that toward thirty-five he would knock together a million, exclusively through his practice as a civil lawyer.
His comrades not infrequently elected him chairman of meetings and head of the class, but this honour Ramses invariably declined, excusing himself with lack of time.
But still he did not avoid participation in his comrades’ trials by arbitration, and his arguments— always incontrovertibly logical— were possessed of an amazing virtue in ending the trials with peace, to the mutual satisfaction of the litigating parties.
He, as well as Yarchenko, knew well the value of popularity among the studying youths, and even if he did look upon people with a certain contempt, from above, still he never, by as much as a single movement of his thin, clever, energetical lips, showed this.
“Well, Gavrila Petrovich, no one is necessarily dragging you into committing a fall from grace,” said Ramses in a conciliatory manner, “What is all this pathos and melancholy for, when the matter as it stands is altogether simple?
A company of young Russian gentlemen wishes to pass the remnant of the night modestly and amicably, to make merry, to sing a little, and to take internally several gallons of wine and beer.
But everything is closed now, except these very same houses.
Ergo! … ”
“Consequently, we will go merry-making to women who are for sale?
To prostitutes?
Into a brothel?” Yarchenko interrupted him, mockingly and inimically.
“And even so?
A certain philosopher, whom it was desired to humiliate, was given a seat at dinner near the musicians.
But he, sitting down, said: ’Here is a sure means of making the last place the first.’
And finally I repeat: If your conscience does not allow you, as you express yourself, to buy a woman, then you can go there and come away, preserving your innocence in all its blossoming inviolability.”
“You overdo it, Ramses,” objected Yarchenko with displeasure. “You remind me of those bourgeois, who, while it is still dark, have gathered to gape at an execution and who say: we have nothing to do with this, we are against capital punishment, this is all the prosecuting attorney’s and the executioner’s doing.”
“Superbly said and partly true, Gavrila Petrovich.
But to us, precisely, this comparison may not even apply.
One cannot, you see, treat some malignant disease while absent, without seeing the sufferer in person.
And yet all of us, who are now standing here in the street and interfering with the passers-by, will be obliged at some time in our work to run up against the terrible problem of prostitution, and what a prostitution at that— the Russian!
Lichonin, I, Borya Sobashnikov and Pavlov as jurists, Petrovsky and Tolpygin as medicos.
True, Veltman has a distinct specialty— mathematics.
But then, he will be a pedagogue, a guide of youth, and, deuce take it, even a father!
And if you are going to scare with a bugaboo, it is best to look upon it one’s self first.
And finally, you yourself, Gavrila Petrovich— expert of dead languages and future luminary of grave digging— is the comparison, then, of the contemporary brothels, say, with some Pompeian lupanaria, or the institution of sacred prostitution in Thebes and Nineveh, not important and instructive to you? … ”
“Bravo, Ramses, magnificent!” roared Lichonin. “And what’s there to talk so much about, fellows?
Take the professor under the gills and put him in a cab!”
The students, laughing and jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized him under the arms, caught him around the waist.
All of them were equally drawn to the women, but none, save Lichonin, had enough courage to take the initiative upon himself.
But now all this complicated, unpleasant and hypocritical business was happily resolved into a simple, easy joke upon the older comrade.
Yarchenko resisted, and was angry, and laughing, trying to break away.
But at this moment a tall, black-moustached policeman, who had long been eyeing them keenly and inimically, walked up to the uproarious students.
“I’d ask you stewdent gents not to congregate.
It’s not allowed!
Keep on going!”
They moved on in a throng.
Yarchenka was beginning to soften little by little.
“Gentlemen, I am ready to go with you, if you like … Do not think, however, that the sophistries of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses have convinced me … No, I simply would be sorry to break up the party … But I make one stipulation: we will drink a little there, gab a little, laugh a little, and so forth … but let there be nothing more, no filth of any kind … It is shameful and painful to think that we, the flower and glory— of the Russian intelligentzia, will go all to pieces and let our mouths water at the sight of the first skirt that comes our way.”
“I swear it!” said Lichonin, putting up his hand.