present was acting with equal stupidity in pretending those same things. All the time I had a feeling that each one of my companions was finding the festivities as distasteful as I was myself; but, in the belief that he was the only one doing so, felt himself bound to pretend that he was very merry, in order not to mar the general hilarity. Also, strange to state, I felt that I ought to keep up this pretence for the sole reason that into a punch-bowl there had been poured three bottles of champagne at nine roubles the bottle and ten bottles of rum at four — making seventy roubles in all, exclusive of the supper.

So convinced of my folly did I feel that, when, at next day’s lecture, those of my comrades who had been at Baron Z.‘s party seemed not only in no way ashamed to remember what they had done, but