"We must turn to our neighbour and ask for bread," he said by way of explaining to me his transformation, and he began to look keenly at the windows of the cottages. At the window of one of the cottages stood a woman suckling a child. Promtov did obeisance to her, and said in a supplicating tone: "My sister, give bread to pilgrim folk!" "Be not angry!" replied the woman, measuring us with suspicious eyes. "May your breasts grow dry, then, daughter of a dog!" was the valediction my fellow-traveller sourly threw her. The woman screamed like one who has been stung, and rushed out to us. "Oh, you, you...." she began. Promtov, without moving from the spot, looked her straight in the face with his black eyes, and their expression was savage and malevolent.... The woman grew pale, trembled, and murmuring something, quickly entered the hut. "Let us go," I proposed to Promtov. "No, we'll wait till she brings out the bread." "She'll bring out the men upon us with pitchforks." "A lot you know!" observed this wolf with a sceptical smile. He was right. The woman appeared before us, holding in her hands half a loaf of bread and a solid bit of fat. Bowing low and silently to Promtov, she said to him with the tone of a suppliant: "Pray take it, oh, man of God! be not angry!" "God deliver thee from the evil eye, from sorcery, and from the ague!" was the unctuous farewell with which Promtov parted from her, and so we went on our way. "Listen now!" said I, when we were already a good way from the cottage, "what an odd way of begging alms you have--to say no more." "It's the best way. If you fix your eyes upon the woman for a little, she takes you for a sorcerer, grows scared, and will not only give you bread but the whole concern if necessary. Why should I beg and pray and lower myself before her when I can command? I have always thought that it is better to take than to beg ... but if you cannot take, you must beg, I suppose...." "And has it never happened that instead of bread you sometimes...." "Got one for myself, eh? No. Trust to me for that! My dear brother, let me tell you that I have got a magic little bit of paper, and I've only got to show it to a muzhik,[2] and he is instantly my slave. Would you like me to show it to you?" I held in my hands a pretty dirty and crumpled piece of paper, and perceived that it was a transit certificate issued to Pavel Ignat'ev Promtov by the administrative authorities of Petersburg, permitting him to journey from Astrakhan to Nikolaiev. The paper bore the seal of the Astrakhan police-office, with the corresponding signatures--all quite regular. [2] Peasant. "I don't understand," I said, returning this document into the hands of its proprietor. "How is it you are starting from Astrakhan, when your point of departure was St. Petersburg?" He smiled, his whole face expressed the consciousness of his superiority over me.