"Let me alone! Let me alone! you devil!" she shrieked in a high treble voice. "Leave go of me then!" answered the tenor voice of a man. "I won't let go of you, you wretch! you monster!" "Shut up, and leave go of me!" "Not if you kill me--I won't let you go!" "What, you won't? Then take that, you heretic!" "Help! He is killing me! Help!" "Will you let go of me then?" "You may go on beating me, you dog, till you have killed me!" "I can't do that in a hurry--you take more killing than that!" At the first words of such a dialogue, the painter Soutchkoff's apprentice, Senka Tschischik, who from one day's end to the other was busy in one of the sheds in the yard rubbing and mixing colours, used to rush out in hot haste, and whilst his little black mouse eyes flashed, he would shout with all his might, so that his voice rang right across the court-- "There's another row up at Orloff's the cobbler." The little Tschischik was an ardent lover of every sort of adventure and story. As soon as there appeared to be trouble at the Orloffs he would run quickly to the window of their dwelling, lie down on his stomach, poke his mischievous shock head of hair and his thin face, smeared with ochre and vermilion, as far as he could into the gloom of the cellar, and watch with curiosity all that went on in the dark, damp hole, from which arose a smell of musty cobbler's wax and of sour batter. There, on the floor of this hole were to be seen two figures, rolling over each other on the ground, groaning and cursing. "You want to kill me, then?" gasped at this moment, in a warning, breathless voice, the woman. "Don't be afraid!" the man mockingly reassured her in a tone of suppressed violence. Heavy dull blows were then heard, falling on something soft; then sobs and sighs, and the panting of a man, who seemed to be making efforts to move a heavy object. "Blast it all! Now he has given her a good one!--with the boot-last," cried Tschischik, watching what was going on in the cellar, whilst the public who had gathered round--the porter, Lewtschenko, the accordion-player Kisljakoff, a couple of tailor's apprentices, and other amateurs of gratuitous amusement,--were all impatient to get news from Senka, and pulled him, now by his legs and now by his many-coloured trousers. "Well, what's going on now? what's he doing to her this time?" they would ask. "Now he is sitting astride of her, and is banging her nose into the ground," explained Senka, who with true enjoyment was taking in every action of the play. The public pushed nearer to the windows of the Orloffs' dwelling. They burned with curiosity to see with their own eyes all the developments of the struggle, and although they knew well of old every point in the attack and defence in the war which Grischka Orloff waged against his wife, they always appeared equally surprised and astonished. "No, but what a devil he is! He has beaten her again, has he not, till she is bleeding?" asked one of them.