lustre, as well as the red lantern over the stoop. Simeon was a
spare, stocky, taciturn and harsh man, with straight, broad
shoulders, dark-haired, pock-marked, with little bald spots on his
eye-brows and moustaches from small-pox, and with black, dull,
insolent eyes. By day he was free and slept, while at night he sat
without absenting himself in the front hall under the reflector,
in order to help the guests with their coats and to be ready in
case of any disorder.

The pianist came--a tall, elegant young man, with white eyebrows
and eyelashes, and a cataract in his right eye. The while there
were no guests, he and Isaiah Savvich quietly rehearsed Pas
d'Espagne, at that time coming into fashion. For every dance
ordered by the guests, they received thirty kopecks for an easy
dance, and a half rouble for a quadrille. But one-half of this
price was taken out by the proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other,
however, the musicians divided evenly. In this manner the pianist
received only a quarter of the general earnings, which, of course,
was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich played as one self-taught and was
distinguished for having no more ear for music than a piece of
wood. The pianist was constantly compelled to drag him on to new
tunes, to correct and cover his mistakes with loud chords. The
girls said of their pianist to the guests, with a certain pride,
that he had been in the conservatory and always ranked as the
first pupil, but since he is a Jew, and in addition to that his
eyes had begun to trouble him, he had not succeeded in completing
the course. They all treated him carefully and considerately, with
some sort of solicitous, somewhat mawkish, commiseration, which
chimes so well with the inner, backstage customs of houses of ill-
fame, where underneath the outer coarseness and the flaunting of