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 lady could endure it no longer.--"Tatyana!" said she.... "Good gracious!--I am amazed! Is it possible that thou didst not love thy son? How is it that thy appetite has not disappeared?--How canst thou eat that cabbage-soup?" "My Vasya is dead," replied the woman softly, and tears of suffering again began to stream down her sunken cheeks,--"and, of course, my own end has come also: my head has been taken away from me while I am still alive. But the cabbage-soup must not go to waste; for it is salted" The lady-mistress merely shrugged her shoulders and went away. She got salt cheaply.