“Look” she said; “what a funny figure, or, to put it more correctly, what a funny profession!  There, there, that one who’s playing on a ‘syrinx of seven reeds.’”

Everyone looked in the direction of her hand.  And really, the picture was funny enough.  Behind the Roumanian orchestra was sitting a stout, whiskered man, probably the father, and perhaps even the grandfather, of a numerous family, and with all his might was whistling into seven little pipes glued together.  As it was difficult for him, probably, to move this instrument between his lips, he therefore, with an unusual rapidity, turned his head now to the left, now to the right.

“An amazing occupation,” said Rovinskaya.  “Well now, Chaplinsky, you try to toss your head about like that.”

Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the artiste, immediately began obediently and zealously to do this, but after half a minute desisted.

“It’s impossible,” he said, “either long training, or, perhaps, hereditary abilities, are necessary for this.”

The baroness during this time was tearing away the petals of her rose and throwing them into a goblet; then, with difficulty suppressing a yawn, she said, making just the least bit of a wry face: 

“But, my God, how drearily they divert themselves in our K—!  Look:  no laughter, no singing, no dances.  Just like some herd that’s been driven here, in order to be gay on purpose!”

Ryazanov listlessly took his goblet, sipped it a little, and answered apathetically in his enchanting voice: 

“Well, and is it any gayer in your Paris, or Nice?  Why, it must be confessed—­mirth, youth and laughter have vanished forever out of human life, and it is scarcely possible that they will ever return.  One must regard people with more patience, it seems to me.  Who knows, perhaps for all those sitting here, below, the present evening is a rest, a holiday?”

“The speech for the defense,” put in Chaplinsky in his calm manner.

But Rovinskaya quickly turned around to the men, and her long emerald eyes narrowed.  And this with her served as a sign of wrath, from which even crowned personages committed follies at times.  However, she immediately restrained herself and continued languidly: 

“I don’t understand what you are talking about.  I don’t understand even what we came here for.  For there are no longer any spectacles in the world.  Now I, for instance, have seen bull-fights in Seville, Madrid and Marseilles—­an exhibition which does not evoke anything save loathing.  I have also seen boxing and wrestling nastiness and brutality.  I also happened to participate in a tiger hunt, at which I sat under a baldachin on the back of a big, wise white elephant ... in a word, you all know this well yourselves.  And out of all my great, chequered, noisy life, from which I have grown old ...”

“Oh, what are you saying, Ellena Victorovna!” said Chaplinsky with a tender reproach.