"Here you are, and don't know what that means! That is our club term. You know how eggs roll. Well, when any one goes with a gait like that, he becomes a shliupik. And so when any one of us goes stumbling through the club, he becomes a shliupik. You laugh, do you? but one has to look out else he finds himself one. Do you know Prince Chechensky?" he asked; and Levin saw by his face that he was going to tell some ridiculous yarn.
"No, I don't know him."
"Well, no matter. Prince Chechensky is famous. Well, that is neither here nor there. He's always playing billiards. Three years ago he wasn't among the shliupiks, but was a great galliard! He himself called other people shliupiks. Only he came one time .... but our Swiss—you know Vasili, our tall one?—he is a great bonmotist. Prince Chechensky asks him, "Well, Vasili, is any one here yet? have any shliupiks come?' And Vasili answers, 'You are the third.' Now, brother! how is that?"
The two men walked on, chatting, and greeting their friends, and passed through all the rooms,—the main room, where men accustomed to one another as partners were playing cards for small stakes; the divan-room, where others were having games of chess, and Sergyeï Ivanovitch was talking with some one; the billiard-room, where, in the bay of the room, around a divan, a gay party, among them Gagin, had gathered and were drinking champagne. They glanced in also at the Infernalnaya, where, at the gambling-table, Yashvin, surrounded by men betting, was already established. With hushed voices, they entered the reading-room, where, under a shaded lamp, a young man with a stern face was turning over the leaves of one journal after another, while near by was a bald-headed general absorbed in reading. They passed quietly into a room which the prince called the Hall of the Wits,[1] and there they found three gentlemen talking politics.
"Prince, we're all ready, if you please," said one
- ↑ Umnaya Komnata, the intellectual room
