ch
mentioned.

Everything assumed another aspect. If his neighbour's dog ran into
the yard, it was beaten within an inch of its life; the children, who
climbed over the fence, were sent back with howls, their little shirts
stripped up, and marks of a switch behind. Even the old woman, when
Ivan Ivanovitch ventured to ask her about something, did something so
insulting that Ivan Ivanovitch, being an extremely delicate man, only
spit, and muttered, "What a nasty woman! even worse than her master!"

Finally, as a climax to all the insults, his hated neighbour built
a goose-shed right against his fence at the spot where they usually
climbed over, as if with the express intention of redoubling the
insult. This shed, so hateful to Ivan Ivanovitch, was constructed with
diabolical swiftness--in one day.

This aroused wrath and a desire for revenge in Ivan Ivanovitch. He
showed no signs of bitterness, in spite of the fact that the shed
encroached on his land; but his heart beat so violently that it was
extremely difficult for him to preserve his calm appearance.

He passed the day in this manner. Night came--Oh, if I were a painter,
how magnificently I would depict the night's charms! I would describe
how all Mirgorod sleeps; how steadily the myriads of stars gaze down
upon it; how the apparent quiet is filled far and near with the barking
of dogs; how the love-sick sacristan steals past them, and scales the
fence with knightly fearlessness; how the white walls of the houses,
bathed in the moonlight, grow whiter still, the overhanging trees
darker; how the shadows of the trees fall blacker, the flowers and
the silent grass become more fragrant, and the crickets, unharmonious
cavaliers of the night, strike up their rattling song in friendly
fashion on all sides. I would describe how, in one of the little,
low-roofed, clay houses, the black-browed village maid, tossing on
her lonely couch, dreams with heaving bosom of some hussar's spurs
and moustache, and how the moonlight smiles upon her cheeks. I would
describe how the black shadows of the bats flit along the white road
before they alight upon the white chimneys of the cottages.

But it would hardly be within my power to depict Ivan Ivanovitch as he
crept out that night, saw in hand; or the various emotions written on
his countenance! Quietly, most quietly, he crawled along and climbed
upon the goose-shed. Ivan Nikiforovitch's dogs knew nothing, as yet, of
the quarrel bet