“Did you get hurt?”

But as the old man also smiled and also spoke, Yurochka did not kiss father and did not even answer him; but suddenly he seemed to have lost his mind—­he commenced to squeal for joy and to run around.  If he had a bell as large as the whole city he would have rung that bell; but as he had no such bell he climbed the linden tree, which stood near the terrace, and began to show off.  The guests below were laughing and mamma was shouting, and suddenly the music began to play, and Yura soon stood in front of the orchestra, spreading his legs apart and, according to his old but long forgotten habit, put his finger into his mouth.  The sounds seemed to strike at him all at once; they roared and thundered; they made his legs tingle, and they shook his jaw.  They played so loudly that there was nothing but the orchestra on the whole earth—­everything else had vanished.  The brass ends of some of the trumpets even spread apart and opened wide from the great roaring; Yura thought that it would be interesting to make a military helmet out of such a trumpet.

Suddenly Yura grew sad.  The music was still roaring, but now it was somewhere far away, while within him all became quiet, and it was growing ever more and more quiet.  Heaving a deep sigh, Yura looked at the sky—­it was so high—­and with slow footsteps he started out to make the rounds of the holiday, of all its confused boundaries, possibilities and distances.  And everywhere he turned out to be too late; he wanted to see how the tables for card playing would be arranged, but the tables were ready and people had been playing cards for a long time when he came up.  He touched the chalk and the brush near his father and his father immediately chased him away.  What of that, what difference did that make to him?  He wanted to see how they would start to dance and he was sure that they would dance in the parlour, but they had already commenced to dance, not in the parlour, but under the linden trees.  He wanted to see how they would light the lanterns, but the lanterns had all been lit already, every one of them, to the very last of the last.  They lit up of themselves like stars.

Mamma danced best of all.

CHAPTER III

Night arrived in the form of red, green and yellow lanterns.  While there were no lanterns, there was no night.  And now it lay everywhere.  It crawled into the bushes; it covered the entire garden with darkness, as with water, and it covered the sky.  Everything looked as beautiful as the very best fairy tale with coloured pictures.  At one place the house had disappeared entirely; only the square window made of red light remained.  And the chimney of the house was visible and there a certain spark glistened, looked down and seemed to think of its own affairs.  What affairs do chimneys have?  Various affairs.

Of the people in the garden only their voices remained.  As long as some one walked near the lanterns he could be seen; but as soon as he walked away all seemed to melt, melt, melt, and the voice above the ground laughed, talked, floating fearlessly in the darkness.  But the officers and the students could be seen even in the dark—­a white spot, and above it a small light of a cigarette and a big voice.