This apparently absurd occurrence seemed nevertheless to annoy our hero considerably. However stupid the words of a fool might be, yet sometimes they are powerful, enough to disconcert a wise man. He began to feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease, like a man who might have accidentally stepped with a pair of patent leather boots into a neglected London sewer. In a word, he felt very uncomfortable. He tried not to think of it any more, attempted to cheer himself up again. In order to distract himself he sat down to play a game of whist; nevertheless, all went like a wheel out of repair. He played twice the wrong colour, and forgetting the rule that you don\'t cut the third time, but leave the chance to your partner, he did so to the great annoyance of his vis-à-vis.

The President could not understand at all how his friend, Pavel Ivanovitch, who understood the rules of the game so well, and who was even an acute player, could make all these blunders, and put a trump upon his king of spades, upon which card he had reckoned as upon a wall of stone.

The President and the Postmaster, and even the Commissioner of Police, as a matter of course, passed their friendly jokes upon our hero at these occurrences, and insinuated that Pavel Ivanovitch must be, nay was, in love, and that they nearly guessed who had caused all his absence of mind, and drawing attention from the game. But all these observations made no impression upon him, and do what they like, they could not succeed in making him even smile or return their jokes.

At supper he was still in the same disposition of mind, and could not even then rally, notwithstanding that he was placed in very good company, and that the hateful Nosdrieff had been obliged to leave the house, because the ladies themselves could not help expressing themselves scandalised with his conduct. The supper was very excellent, and seasoned with general gaiety; all the faces which appeared as it were from under the three branched candelabra, flowers, tarts and bottles, were illuminated with the most unfeigned pleasure. Military men and civilians, ladies, dress-coats, all became most amiable, even to affectation. The gentlemen deserted their chairs and hastened to take the dishes from the hands of the overburthened servants, with the intention to present them themselves to their fair partners at table. A dashing colonel presented a plate with liquid sweets to his lady on the point of his unsheathed sword. Some gentlemen of a sedate and serious age, among whom Tchichikoff happened to sit, were discussing politics most earnestly, whilst eating at the same time some fish and meat unmercifully seasoned with vinegar and mustard. They were conversing on a subject in which he generally liked to take a lively part; nevertheless, he remained silent, and like a man who seemed to be much fatigued or annoyed from a long journey, who feels a peculiar dulness of spirit, and who is incapable of taking any interest in anything. He even did not wait for the end of the supper, but left the company suddenly, and returned to his hotel much earlier than he was wont to do.

In that small apartment, so well known to to the reader, with the door barricaded with a chest of drawers, and with the beetles looking out from the comers occasionally, the disposition of his mind and soul was so full of uneasiness, in fact as uneasy as the chair upon which he was sitting. His heart felt sick and oppressed as if from a tiresome void that was left within it. "I wish the devil had those who imagined and brought into fashion those infernal balls!" said he, passionately, within his own heart. "Where-ever did they pick up the silly idea of dancing and feasting? the whole province has been visited, for three years running, by bad harvests and general dearth, and they give balls and festivals! What an ill-timed fancy; to dress themselves up in gaudy paraphernalia! And as if I had not seen that some of the silly women had wrapped themselves up in shawls worth, a thousand roubles! And all that at the expense of their poor serfs, or, what is still worse, at the expense of men like ourselves. It is but too well known, why a man takes advantage of his position, and injures his soul and conscience; simply for the purpose of offering to his wife a shawl or some such gaudiness for the name of which I do not care a fig.

"And why is this so? for the important reason, that some other gossiping body should not have occasion to say that the wife of the Postmaster or Procurator had a handsome dress on, and for such pretentions you have to pay down often more than a thousand roubles in hard cash. The hue and cry, is; \'a ball, a ball, let us rejoice!\' balls are really a nuisance, not at all suitable for the Russian genius, not at all to the taste of our Russian nature, the devil knows for whom balls are fit; an adult, a perfectly grown up person will suddenly take it in his head to appear all in black, laced and dressed up like a young fiend, and begin to fight about with his legs like a madman. Another again, though standing near his partner, will turn round to his friend and pretend to speak of things of importance, and still continue to cut capers like a goat, right and left.

"All this is pure monkeyism, nothing but monkeyism! Because a Frenchman of forty is as childish as he was in his youth, we Russians ought to be ashamed to imitate him! No, really, after each ball I cannot help feeling as if I had committed a sin; and I would fain not even think of it. My head feels absolutely as empty as after a tedious conversation with a fashionable, who speaks of everything, touches slightly on a hundred subjects at the time, he will make use of all that he has been successful enough to pick up in books, be showy, brilliant; but as for his own imagination, it is incapable of producing anything original, and it is then we find, that the simple conversation of a common tradesman, who knows his business well, is more useful; it is then we find how empty and foolish the conversation of the man of fashion is.

"And as for their balls? What good can possibly be derived from a ball? Let us even suppose for an instance that an author was to undertake to describe all the scenes and occurrences of the ball room, such as they really are? Even in his book, it would appear as insipid and foolish as it is in reality. And pray, what is a ball? Is it moral or is it immoral? The devil take me if I know what to call it! It is with utter disgust, that one would throw away the book even, that speaks of, or describes a ball!"

It was thus unfavourably that Tchichikoff expressed himself on balls in general; but it seemed that another cause of displeasure was deeply involved in these expressions. His great displeasure was not principally directed against the ball itself, but rather the occurrence that took place there, and his sudden breaking down from his enviable position, which made him appear, H............