THE SWEET-SCENTED NAME
when one is in a hurry. The earth itself seems to suck you in, and at each step you feel impotence and tiredness—you feel it like a rheumatism in the marrow. Thence is spite engendered and the hungry gleam grows brighter in the eyes.
Moshkin thought:
"The devil take it, eh, all the devils!"
However, he got there at last.
Behold the road and the house, No. 78. It was a four-storey, dark-painted house with two entrances. He went in at a great yawning gate and read the list of occupiers. Flat No. 57 was not indicated. He looked round for some one to ask, but there was no one about. At last, on a little metal plate beside the dirty-white button of an electric bell, he read: "To the House-porter."
He pressed the button and went in once more to look at the list of occupiers, but even before he got to it he met the porter, a black-bearded man of insinuative appearance.
"Where is lodging 57?"
Moshkin asked the question carelessly, imitating that of the chief of the rural council through whom he lost his place. He knew by experience that with house-porters it is necessary to speak in a certain
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