commercial school, where he learned German thoroughly. After various rather disagreeable experiences, he got at last into a private business house for a salary of about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. On that sum he kept himself, a sick aunt, and a humpbacked sister. At the time of our story he was just twenty-eight. Paklin was acquainted with a number of students, young men who liked him for his cynical wit, the light-hearted venom of his audacious talk, and his one-sided but genuine and unpedantic learning. Only occasionally he suffered at their hands. One day he was somehow late at a political gathering. . . . As he came in, he began at once hurriedly making excuses. . . .
'Poor Paklin was afeared!' sang out some one in a corner, and they all roared with laughter. Paklin at last laughed himself, though his heart was sore. 'He spoke the truth, the ruffian!' he thought to himself. He made Nezhdanov's acquaintance at a Greek eating-house, where he used to go and dine, and where he constantly expressed very free and bold opinions. He used to declare that the chief cause of his democratic frame of mind was the execrable Greek cookery, which upset his liver.
'Yes . . . really . . . what has become of our host?' repeated Paklin. ' I've noticed for
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