mysterious Fedyukov has signed his name again!" said Navagin,
going in to see his wife. "Again I fail to find out who he is."

Madame Navagin was a spiritualist, and so for all phenomena in
nature, comprehensible or incomprehensible, she had a very simple
explanation.

"There's nothing extraordinary about it," she said. "You don't
believe it, of course, but I have said it already and I say it
again: there is a great deal in the world that is supernatural,
which our feeble intellect can never grasp. I am convinced that
this Fedyukov is a spirit who has a sympathy for you . . . If I
were you, I would call him up and ask him what he wants."

"Nonsense, nonsense!"

Navagin was free from superstitions, but the phenomenon which
interested him was so mysterious that all sorts of uncanny devilry
intruded into his mind against his will. All the evening he was
imagining that the incognito Fedyukov was the spirit of some long-dead
clerk, who had been discharged from the service by Navagin's ancestors
and was now revenging himself on their descendant; or perhaps it
was the kinsman of some petty official dismissed by Navagin himself,
or of a girl seduced by him. . . .

All night Navagin dreamed of a gaunt old clerk in a shabby uniform,
with a face as yellow as a lemon, hair that stood up like a brush,
and pewtery eyes; the clerk said something in a sepulchral voice
and shook a bony finger at him. And Navagin almost had an attack
of inflammation of the brain.

For a fortnight he was silent and gloomy and kept walking up and
down and thinking. In the end he overcame his sceptical vanity, and
going into his wife's room he said in a hollow voice:

"Zina, call up Fedyukov!"

The spiritualistic lady was delighted; she sent for a sheet of
cardboard and a saucer, made her husband sit down beside her, and
began upon the magic rites.

Fedyukov did not keep them waiting long. . . .

"What do you want?" asked Navagin.

"Repent," answered the saucer.

"What were you on earth?"

"A sinner. . . ."

"There, you see!" whispered his wife, "and you did not believe!"

Navagin conversed for a long time with Fedyukov, and then called
up Napoleon, Hannibal, Askotchensky, his aunt Klavdya Zaharovna,
and they all gave him brief but correct answers full of deep
significance. He was busy with the saucer for four hours, and fell
asleep soothed and happy that he had become acquainted with a
mysterious world that was new to him. After that h