NOTWITHSTANDING that, as yet, Dimitri’s influence had kept me from indulging in those customary students’ festivities known as kutezhi or “wines,” that winter saw me participate in such a function, and carry away with me a not over-pleasant impression of it. This is how it came about.

At a lecture soon after the New Year, Baron² Z. — a tall, light- haired young fellow of very serious demeanour and regular features — invited us all to spend a sociable³ evening with him. By “us all”, I mean all the men more or less “comme il faut”, of our course, and exclusive of Grap, Semenoff, Operoff, and commoners of that sort. Woloda smiled contemptuously when he heard that I was going to a “wine” of first course men, but I looked to derive⁴ great and unusual pleasure from this, to me, novel method of passing the time. Accordingly, punctually at the appointed hour of eight I presented myself at the Baron’s.

Our host, in an open tunic⁵ and white waistcoat, received his guests in the brilliantly lighted salon⁶ and drawing-room of the small mansion⁷ where his parents lived — they having given up their reception rooms to him for the evening for purposes of this party. In the corridor could be seen the heads and skirts of inquisitive⁸ domestics, while in the dining-room I caught a glimpse of a dress which I imagined to belong to the Baroness⁹ herself. The guests numbered a score, and were all of them students except Herr Frost (in attendance upon Iwin) and a tall, red-faced gentleman who was superintending the feast and who was introduced to every one as a relative of the Baron’s and a former student of the University of Dorpat. At first, the excessive brilliancy and formal appointments of the reception-rooms had such a chilling effect upon this youthful company that every one involuntarily hugged the walls, except a few bolder spirits and the ex-Dorpat student, who, with his waistcoat already unbuttoned, seemed to be in every room, and in every corner of every room, at once, and filled the whole place with his

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