dashed forward to pour out the wine. Ivan Ilyitch, still standing, took the glass.
“I am particularly, particularly glad on this occasion, that I can ..,” he began, “that I can … testify before all of you…. In short, as your chief … I wish you, madam” (he turned to the bride), “and you, friend Porfiry, I wish you the fullest, completest happiness for many long years.”
And he positively drained the glass with feeling, the seventh he had drunk that evening. Pseldonimov looked at him gravely and even sullenly. The general was beginning to feel an agonising hatred of him.
“And that scarecrow” (he looked at the officer) “keeps obtruding himself. He might at least have shouted ‘hurrah!’ and it would have gone off, it would have gone off….”
“And you too, Akim Petrovitch, drink a glass to their health,” added the mother, addressing the head clerk. “You are his superior, he is under you. Look after my boy, I beg you as a mother. And don’t forget us in the future, our good, kind friend, Akim Petrovitch.”
“How nice these old Russian women are,” thought Ivan Ilyitch. “She has livened us all up. I have always loved the democracy….”
At that moment another tray was brought to the table; it was brought in by a maid wearing a crackling cotton dress that had never been washed, and a crinoline. She could hardly grasp the tray in both hands, it was so big. On it there were numbers of plates of apples, sweets, fruit meringues and fruit cheeses, walnuts and so on, and so on. The tray had been till then in the drawing-room for the delectation of all the guests, and especially the ladies. But now it was brought to the general alone.
“Do not disdain our humble fare, your Excellency. What we have we are pleased to offer,” the old lady repeated, bowing.
“Delighted!” said Ivan Ilyitch, and with real pleasure took a walnut and cracked it between his fingers. He had made up his mind to win popularity at all costs.
Meantime the bride suddenly giggled.
“What is it?” asked Ivan Ilyitch with a smile, encouraged by this sign of life.
“Ivan Kostenkinitch, here, makes me laugh,” she answered, looking down.
The general distinguished, indeed, a flaxen-headed young man, exceedingly good-looking, who was sitting on a chair at the other end of the sofa, whispering something to Madame Pseldonimov. The young man stood up. He was apparently very young and very shy.
“I was telling the lady about a ‘dream book,’ your Excellency,” he muttered as though apologising.
“About what sort of ‘dream book’?” asked Ivan Ilyitch condescendingly.
“There is a new ‘dream book,’ a literary one. I was telling the lady that to dream of Mr. Panaev means spilling coffee on one’s shirt front.”
“What innocence!” thought Ivan Ilyitch, with positive annoyance.
Though the young man flushed very red as he said it, he was incredibly delighted that he had said this about Mr. Panaev.
“To be sure, I have heard of it…,” responded his Excellency.
“No, there is something better than that,” said a voice quite close to Ivan Ilyitch. “There is a new encyclopædia being published, and they say Mr. Kraevsky will write articles… and satirical literature.”
This was said by a young man who was by no means embarrassed, but rather free and easy. He was wearing gloves and a white waistcoat, and carried a hat in his hand. He did not dance, and looked condescending, for he was on the staff of a satirical paper called The Firebrand, and gave himself airs accordingly. He had come casually to the wedding, invited as an honoured guest of the Pseldonimovs’, with whom he was on intimate terms and with whom only a year before he had lived in very poor lodgings, kept by a German woman. He drank vodka, however, and for that purpose had more than once withdrawn to a snug little back room to which all the guests knew their way. The general disliked him extremely.
“And the reason that’s funny,” broke in joyfully the flaxen-headed young man, who had talked of the shirt front and at whom the young man on the comic paper looked with hatred in consequence, “it’s funny, your Excellency, because it is supposed by the writer that Mr. Kraevsky does not know how to spell, and thinks that ‘satirical’ ought to be written with a ‘y’ instead of an ‘i.’”
But the poor young man scarcely finished his sentence; he could see from his eyes that the general knew all this long ago, for the general himself looked embarrassed, and evidently because he knew it. The young man seemed inconceivably ashamed. He succeeded in effacing himself completely, and remained very melancholy all the rest of the evening.
But to make up for that the young man on the staff of the Firebrand came up nearer, and seemed to be intending to sit down somewhere close by. Such free and easy manners struck Ivan Ilyitch as rather shocking.
“Tell me, please, Porfiry,” he began, in order to say something, “why — I have always wanted to ask you about it in person — why you are called Pseldonimov instead of Pseudonimov? Your name surely must be Pseudonimov.”
“I cannot inform you exactly, your Excellency,” said Pseldonimov.
“It must have been that when his father went into the service they made a mistake in his papers, so that he has remained now Pseldonimov,” put in Akim Petrovitch. “That does happen.”
“Undoubted-ly,” the general said with warmth, “undoubted-ly; for only think, Pseudonimov comes from the literary word pseudonym, while Pseldonimov means nothing.”
“Due to foolishness,” added Akim Petrovitch.
“You mean what is due to foolishness?”
“The Russian common people in their foolishness often alter letters, and sometimes pronounce them in their own way. For instance, they say nevalid instead of invalid.”
“Oh, yes, nevalid, he-he-he….”
“Mumber, too, they say, your Excellency,” boomed out the tall officer, who had long been itching to distinguish himself in some way.
“What do you mean by mumber?”
“Mumber instead of number, your Excellency.”
“Oh, yes, mumber … instead of number…. To be sure, to be sure…. He-he-he!” Ivan Ilyitch had to do a chuckle for the benefit of the officer too.
The officer straightened his tie.
“Another thing they say is nigh by,” the young man on the comic paper put in. But his Excellency tried not to hear this. His chuckles were not at everybody’s disposal.
“Nigh by, instead of near,” the young man on the comic paper persisted, in evident irritation.
Ivan Ilyitch looked at him sternly.
“Come, why persist?” Pseldonimov whispered to him.
“Why, I was talking. Mayn’t one speak?” the latter protested in a whisper; but he said no more and with secret fury walked out of the room.
He
