PushkinA Holiday2In a certain important place there occurred a phenomenon important in the extreme; this phenomenon occurred, that is to say, it happened.In connection with this incident, in the above-mentioned place there appeared, with extremely serious faces, in embroidered uniform jackets, some persons of extreme and extraordinary powers; they, so to speak, turned out to be there.This was a day of extraordinary events. It was, of course, sunny. From its very earliest hours the sun scintillated in the sky; and everything that could scintillate, did scintillate: Petersburg roofs, Petersburg spires, Petersburg domes.Somewhere out there a shot was fired.3If you had found time to cast a glance at that important place, you would have seen only lacquer, only lustre; the glitter on the mirror-like windows; well, and of course – also the glitter beyond the mirror-like windows; the glitter on the columns; the glitter on the parquetry; the glitter by the entrance porch, too; in a word, lacquer, lustre and glitter!That was why since an early hour at the various ends of the capital of the Russian Empire all the ranks, from the third class to the first class inclusive,4 silver-haired elders with perfumed whiskers and bald spots shining like lacquer, had been energetically putting on starched linen as though it were some knightly armour; and thus, in white, they took from cupboards their red lacquered boxes, reminiscent of ladies’ diamond-cases; a yellow, old man’s fingernail would press the spring, and this would make, with a click, the red lacquered lid fly open with pleasant resilience, exquisitely to reveal upon a bed of soft velvet its dazzling star; just then the same grey valet would bring into the room a coat-hanger on which one could see, first: a dazzlingly white pair of trousers; second: a uniform jacket of black lustre with a gilded breast; to these white trousers stooped a bald spot that burned like lacquer, and the grey-haired little old man, without groaning, donned on top of the white, white pair of trousers the uniform jacket of brilliant black lustre with gilded chest, on to which the silver of his grey hair aromatically fell; obliquely then did he wind around himself a bright red satin sash, if he was a cavalier of St Anne;5 but if he was a cavalier of a higher order, then his sparkling chest was wound in a blue sash.
