a tickling in their throat and about their eyelids.
Marfutkin, the president of the Zemstvo, to stifle the unpleasant
feeling, bends down to the police captain's ear and whispers:

"I was at Ivan Fyodoritch's yesterday. . . . Pyotr Petrovitch and
I took all the tricks, playing no trumps. . . . Yes, indeed. . . .
Olga Andreyevna was so exasperated that her false tooth fell out
of her mouth."

But at last the "Eternal Memory" is sung. Gelikonsky respectfully
takes away the candles, and the memorial service is over. Thereupon
there follows a momentary commotion; there is a changing of vestments
and a thanksgiving service. After the thanksgiving, while Father
Yevmeny is disrobing, the visitors rub their hands and cough, while
their hostess tells some anecdote of the good-heartedness of the
deceased Trifon Lvovitch.

"Pray come to lunch, friends," she says, concluding her story with
a sigh.

The visitors, trying not to push or tread on each other's feet,
hasten into the dining-room. . . . There the luncheon is awaiting
them. The repast is so magnificent that the deacon Konkordiev thinks
it his duty every year to fling up his hands as he looks at it and,
shaking his head in amazement, say:

"Supernatural! It's not so much like human fare, Father Yevmeny,
as offerings to the gods."

The lunch is certainly exceptional. Everything that the flora and
fauna of the country can furnish is on the table, but the only thing
supernatural about it, perhaps, is that on the table there is
everything except . . . alcoholic beverages. Lyubov Petrovna has
taken a vow never to have in her house cards or spirituous liquors
--the two sources of her husband's ruin. And the only bottles
contain oil and vinegar, as though in mockery and chastisement of
the guests who are to a man desperately fond of the bottle, and
given to tippling.

"Please help yourselves, gentlemen!" the marshal's widow presses
them. "Only you must excuse me, I have no vodka. . . . I have none
in the house."

The guests approach the table and hesitatingly attack the pie. But
the progress with eating is slow. In the plying of forks, in the
cutting up and munching, there is a certain sloth and apathy. . . .
Evidently something is wanting.

"I feel as though I had lost something," one of the justices of the
peace whispers to the other. "I feel as I did when my wife ran away
with the engineer. . . . I can't eat."

Marfutkin, before beginning to eat, fumbles for a lon