Act II. _Tatiana's_ name-day is being celebrated with a big ball.

_Onegin_ goes there on _Lenski's_ invitation. The stupid company with their narrow views about him vex him so much that he seeks to revenge himself on _Lenski_ for it, for which he begins courting _Olga_. _Lenski_ takes the jest in earnest; it comes to a quarrel between the friends. _Lenski_ rushes out and sends _Onegin_ a challenge. Social considerations force _Onegin_ to accept the challenge; a duelling fanatic landlord, _Saretsky_ stirs _Lenski's_ anger so severely that a reconciliation is not possible. This part in Pushkin's work is the keenest satire, an extraordinarily efficacious mockery of the whole subject of duelling. There is derision on _Onegin's_ side, too, for he chooses as his second his coachman Gillot. But the duel was terribly in earnest; _Lenski_ falls shot through by his opponent's bullet. (This scene recalls a sad experience of the poet himself; for he himself fell in a duel by the bullet of a supercilious courtier, Georg d'Anthès-Heckeren, who died in Alsace in 1895.)