He longed for her, he always yearned to see her; while in her presence he became timid, awkward and stupid; he knew it and suffered on this account.

He frequently visited her, but it was hard to find her at home alone; perfumed dandies like flies over a piece of sugar--were always flitting about her.

They spoke to her in French, sang and laughed, while he looked at them in silence, tortured by anger and jealousy.

His legs crossed, he sat somewhere in a corner of her richly furnished drawing-room, where it was extremely difficult to walk without overturning or at least striking against something--Foma sat and watched them sternly.
Over the soft rugs she was noiselessly passing hither and thither, casting to him kind glances and smiles, while her admirers were fawning upon her, and they all, like serpents, were cleverly gliding by the various little tables, chairs, screens, flower-stands--a storehouse full of beautiful and frail things, scattered about the room with a carelessness equally dangerous to them and to Foma.

But when he walked there, the rugs did not drown his footsteps, and all these things caught at his coat, trembled and fell.