Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
The air was warm, and a slight dust floated above the streets. Except for one or two passers-by, the boulevard was absolutely deserted. Yourii walked slowly along, his eyes fixed on the ground. "How boring!" he thought. "What am I to do?" Suddenly Schafroff, the student, walking briskly, and, swinging his arm, approached him with a friendly smile on his face.
"Where is the lecture to be given?" he asked with the same slightly contemptuous smile as he handed back the pamphlet. "At the school," replied Schafroff, mentioning the one at which Sina Karsavina and Dubova were teachers. Yourii remembered that Lialia had once told him about these lectures, but he had paid no attention. "May I come with you?" he asked.
Yourii Svarogitsch and Schafroff were both keenly interested in politics, and in a recently formed society for mutual education, Yourii read all the latest books, and believed that he had now found his vocation in life, and a way to end all his doubts. Yet, however much he read, and despite all his activities, life had no charm for him, being barren and dreary.
He looked back, and the garden which he had always thought beautiful, and dim, and mysterious, seemed now, after what had happened, to have been shut off from the rest of the world, a sombre, dreary place. Schafroff breathed hard, and looked nervously over his spectacles in all directions, as if he thought that at any moment, something equally dreadful might again occur.
"Everybody's quite satisfied. What more do they want?" "That is quite true," said Dubova. "Whole columns in the newspapers are devoted to actors and their wonderful performances; it is positively revolting; whereas here ..." "Yet what a good work we're doing!" said Schafroff, with conviction, as he gathered his pamphlets together. "Sancta Simplicitas!" ejaculated Yourii inwardly.
Yourii sat beside Sina at a desk and listened while Schafroff read, calmly, but badly, a paper on universal suffrage. He had a hard, monotonous voice and everything he read sounded like a column of statistics. Yet everybody listened attentively with the exception of the intellectual people in the front row, who soon grew restless and began whispering to each other.
"I dare say they are enjoying themselves," she observed with a shrug of the shoulders. "Hark!" said Riasantzeff, as the sound of firing reached them. "That was a shot," exclaimed Schafroff. "What's the meaning of it?" cried Lialia, as she nervously clung to her lover's arm. "Don't be frightened! If it is a wolf, at this time of year they are tame, and would never attack two people."
"So little is done here for the people," he said, as if he were telling Yourii a great secret, "and if anything is done, it is in a half- hearted, careless way. It is most extraordinary. To amuse a parcel of bored gentlefolk dozens of first-rate actors, singers and lecturers are engaged, but for the people a lecturer like myself is quite good enough." Schafroff smiled at his own bland irony.
God!" screamed Sina Karsavina, holding her head with both hands, and shutting her eyes tightly. Horrified and disgusted at the sight of Sarudine crouching there on all fours, Yourii, followed by Schafroff, rushed at Sanine.
Schafroff smiled as one thoroughly pleased with himself. "We have got a lecture to-day," he said, pointing to a packet of thin pamphlets in coloured wrappers. Yourii mechanically took one, and, opening it, read the long, dry preface to a popular Socialistic address, once well known to him, but which he had quite forgotten.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking