“Stepan, are you married?” and then unseemly vulgarities followed—­by way of showing me special attention.  Kukushkin flattered Orlov’s weaknesses, humoured his corrupted and blase ways; to please him he affected malicious raillery and atheism, in his company criticised persons before whom in other places he would slavishly grovel.  When at supper they talked of love and women, he pretended to be a subtle and perverse voluptuary.  As a rule, one may say, Petersburg rakes are fond of talking of their abnormal tastes.  Some young actual civil councillor is perfectly satisfied with the embraces of his cook or of some unhappy street-walker on the Nevsky Prospect, but to listen to him you would think he was contaminated by all the vices of East and West combined, that he was an honourary member of a dozen iniquitous secret societies and was already marked by the police.  Kukushkin lied about himself in an unconscionable way, and they did not exactly disbelieve him, but paid little heed to his incredible stories.

The third guest was Gruzin, the son of a worthy and learned general; a man of Orlov’s age, with long hair, short-sighted eyes, and gold spectacles.  I remember his long white fingers, that looked like a pianist’s; and, indeed, there was something of a musician, of a virtuoso, about his whole figure.  The first violins in orchestras look just like that.  He used to cough, suffered from migraine, and seemed invalidish and delicate.  Probably at home he was dressed and undressed like a baby.  He had finished at the College of Jurisprudence, and had at first served in the Department of Justice, then he was transferred to the Senate; he left that, and through patronage had received a post in the Department of Crown Estates, and had soon afterwards given that up.  In my time he was serving in Orlov’s department; he was his head-clerk, but he said that he should soon exchange into the Department of Justice again.  He took his duties and his shifting about from one post to another with exceptional levity, and when people talked before him seriously of grades in the service, decorations, salaries, he smiled good-naturedly and repeated Prutkov’s aphorism:  “It’s only in the Government service you learn the truth.”  He had a little wife with a wrinkled face, who was very jealous of him, and five weedy-looking children.  He was unfaithful to his wife, he was only fond of his children when he saw them, and on the whole was rather indifferent to his family, and made fun of them.  He and his family existed on credit, borrowing wherever they could at every opportunity, even from his superiors in the office and porters in people’s houses.  His was a flabby nature; he was so lazy that he did not care what became of himself, and drifted along heedless where or why he was going.  He went where he was taken.  If he was taken to some low haunt, he went; if wine was set before him, he drank—­if it were not put before him, he abstained; if wives were abused in his presence, he abused his wife, declaring