the yellow, old, time-eaten, broken, gap-toothed keys glisten
faintly. The stagnant, motionless air still retains yesterday's
odour; it smells of perfumes, tobacco, the sour dampness of a
large uninhabited room, the perspiration of unclean and unhealthy
feminine flesh, face-powder, boracic-thymol soap, and the dust of
the yellow mastic with which the parquet floor had been polished
yesterday. And with a strange charm the smell of withering swamp
grass is blended with these smells. To-day is Trinity. In
accordance with an olden custom, the chambermaids of the
establishment, while their ladies were still sleeping, had bought
a whole waggon of sedge on the market, and had strewn its long,
thick blades, that crunch underfoot, everywhere about--in the
corridors, in the private cabinets, in the drawing room. They,
also, had lit the lamps before all the images. The girls, by
tradition, dare not do this with their hands, which have been
denied during the night.

And the house-porter has adorned the house-entrance, which is
carved in the Russian style, with two little felled birch-trees.
And so with all the houses--the thin white trunks with their scant
dying verdure adorn the exterior near the stoops, bannisters and
doors.

The entire house is quiet, empty and drowsy. The chopping of
cutlets for dinner can be heard from the kitchen. Liubka, one of
the girls, barefooted, in her shift, with bare arms, not good-
looking, freckled, but strong and fresh of body, has come out into
the inner court. Yesterday she had had but six guests on time, but
no one had remained for the night with her, and because of that
she had slept her fill--splendidly, delightfully, all alone, upon