“You overdo it, Ramses,” objected Yarchenko with displeasure.  “You remind me of those bourgeois, who, while it is still dark, have gathered to gape at an execution and who say:  we have nothing to do with this, we are against capital punishment, this is all the prosecuting attorney’s and the executioner’s doing.”

“Superbly said and partly true, Gavrila Petrovich.  But to us, precisely, this comparison may not even apply.  One cannot, you see, treat some malignant disease while absent, without seeing the sufferer in person.  And yet all of us, who are now standing here in the street and interfering with the passers-by, will be obliged at some time in our work to run up against the terrible problem of prostitution, and what a prostitution at that—­the Russian!  Lichonin, I, Borya Sobashnikov and Pavlov as jurists, Petrovsky and Tolpygin as medicos.  True, Veltman has a distinct specialty—­ mathematics.  But then, he will be a pedagogue, a guide of youth, and, deuce take it, even a father!  And if you are going to scare with a bugaboo, it is best to look upon it one’s self first.  And finally, you yourself, Gavrila Petrovich—­expert of dead languages and future luminary of grave digging—­is the comparison, then, of the contemporary brothels, say, with some Pompeian lupanaria, or the institution of sacred prostitution in Thebes and Nineveh, not important and instructive to you? ...”

“Bravo, Ramses, magnificent!” roared Lichonin.  “And what’s there to talk so much about, fellows?  Take the professor under the gills and put him in a cab!”

The students, laughing and jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized him under the arms, caught him around the waist.  All of them were equally drawn to the women, but none, save Lichonin, had enough courage to take the initiative upon himself.  But now all this complicated, unpleasant and hypocritical business was happily resolved into a simple, easy joke upon the older comrade.  Yarchenko resisted, and was angry, and laughing, trying to break away.  But at this moment a tall, black-moustached policeman, who had long been eyeing them keenly and inimically, walked up to the uproarious students.

“I’d ask you stewdent gents not to congregate.  It’s not allowed!  Keep on going!”

They moved on in a throng.  Yarchenka was beginning to soften little by little.

“Gentlemen, I am ready to go with you, if you like ...  Do not think, however, that the sophistries of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses have convinced me ...  No, I simply would be sorry to break up the party ...  But I make one stipulation:  we will drink a little there, gab a little, laugh a little, and so forth ... but let there be nothing more, no filth of any kind ...  It is shameful and painful to think that we, the flower and glory—­of the Russian intelligentzia, will go all to pieces and let our mouths water at the sight of the first skirt that comes our way.”

“I swear it!” said Lichonin, putting up his hand.