stage but one of a woman's anger is when she is silent,
and cannot utter a word. There is one stage more, which was imminent.
The lawyer thought the dinner was over, and with true sincerity begged
Mistress Boris to prepare a little coffee for him and the magistrate.

Boris left the room without a word, placing the coffee machine before
Sarvoelgyi himself; he did not allow anyone else to make it, and occupied
himself with the preparations till Mistress Boris came back.

The magistrate was just dreaming that that fellow swinging from the
ceiling turned to him, and said "will you have a cup of coffee?" It did
him good starting from his doze, to see his host, not on the chandelier,
but sitting in a chair before him, saying: "Will you have a cup of
coffee?"

The magistrate hastened to taste it, with a view to driving the
sleepiness from his eyes, and the lawyer poured some out for himself.

Just at that moment Mistress Boris entered with a dish of omelette.

Mistress Boris with a face betraying the last stage of anger, approached
the lawyer:--she smiled tenderly.

It is not the pleasantest sight in the world when a lady with a plate
of omelette in her hand, smiles tenderly upon a man who is well aware of
the fact that only a hair's breadth separates him from the catastrophe
of having the whole dish dashed on his head.

"Kindly help yourself."

The lawyer felt a cold shiver run down his back.

"You will surely like this!--omelette."

"I see, my dear woman, that it is omelette," whispered the lawyer; "but
no one of my family could enjoy omelette after black coffee."

The catastrophe had not yet arrived. The lawyer had his eyes already
shut, waiting for the inevitable; but the storm, to his astonishment,
passed over his head.

There was something else to attract the thunderbolt. The magistrate had
again taken his seat at the table, and was putting sugar in his coffee;
he could not have any such excuse.

"Kindly help yourself ..."

The magistrate's hair stood on end at her awful look. He saw that this
relentless dragon of the apocalypse would devour him, if he did not
stuff himself to death with the omelette. Yet it was utterly impossible.
He could not have eaten a morsel even if confronting the stake or the
gallows.

"Pardon, a thousand pardons, my dear woman," he panted, drawing his
chair farther away from the threatening horror: "I feel so unwell that I
cannot take dinner."

Then the storm broke.

Mistr