bright red, as though bloody.

This strange insect kept incessantly turning its head downward, upward,
to the right, to the left, and moving its claws about ... then suddenly
it wrested itself from the wall, flew clattering through the room,--and
again alighted, again began to move in terrifying and repulsive manner,
without stirring from the spot. It evoked in all of us disgust, alarm,
even terror.... None of us had ever seen anything of the sort; we all
cried: "Expel that monster!" We all flourished our handkerchiefs at it
from a distance ... for no one could bring himself to approach it ...
and when the insect had flown in we had all involuntarily got out of the
way.

Only one of our interlocutors, a pale-faced man who was still young,
surveyed us all with surprise.--He shrugged his shoulders, he smiled, he
positively could not understand what had happened to us and why we were
so agitated. He had seen no insect, he had not heard the ominous clatter
of its wings.

Suddenly the insect seemed to rivet its attention on him, soared into
the air, and swooping down upon his head, stung him on the brow, a
little above the eyes.... The young man emitted a faint cry and fell
dead.

The dreadful fly immediately flew away.... Only then did we divine what
sort of a visitor we had had.

May, 1878.

CABBAGE-SOUP

The son of a widowed peasant-woman died--a young fellow aged twenty, the
best labourer in the village.

The lady-proprietor of that village, on learning of the peasant-woman's
affliction, went to call upon her on the very day of the funeral.

She found her at home.

Standing in the middle of her cottage, in front of the table, she was
ladling out empty[73] cabbage-soup from the bottom of a smoke-begrimed
pot, in a leisurely way, with her right hand (her left hung limply by
her side), and swallowing spoonful after spoonful.

The woman's face had grown sunken and dark; her eyes were red and
swollen ... but she carried herself independently and uprightly, as in
church.[74]

"O Lord!" thought the lady; "she can eat at such a moment ... but what
coarse feelings they have!"

And then the lady-mistress recalled how, when she had lost her own
little daughter, aged nine months, a few years before, she had refused,
out of grief, to hire a very beautiful villa in the vicinity of
Petersburg, and had passed the entire summer in town!--But the
peasant-woman continued to sip her cabbage-soup.

At last the la