“Repeat—repeat them, whatsoever ye have heard!” she shouted, flushing crimson: it was a matter of general knowledge that she was on exceedingly intimate terms with Matthew. “I will, and to your face, when your goodman is back from the army.” “Beware what ye say of me! What, will ye babble and gabble here?” “Wherefore scream, when none accuses you!” Ploshka’s wife cried out in rebuke; but Teresa was not soon appeased, and she muttered to herself for a good while. “Have they been here, with the ‘bear?’” Roch asked, to change the subject. “They are at the organist’s now, and will be here at once.” “Who are the performers?” “Why, the sons of Gulbas and Filipka; who but they, the rogues!” “Here they come!” the lasses cried. In front of the cabin, a long-drawn roar resounded; then various animals’ cries: cocks crowing, sheep bleating, horses whinnying: all this to the accompaniment of a fife. Finally, the door opened, and a young fellow came in, clad in a sheepskin coat, turned inside out, and a tall fur cap, with his face so blackened, he looked like a gipsy. He came pulling the “bear” in question after him by a rope, covered all over with shaggy brown pea-straw, save for a head of fur with paper ears that he could shake at will, and a tongue that hung out for more than a foot. To his arms were fastened staves with pea-straw twisted round them, so that he seemed to go on all fours. After him went the other bear-leader, wielding a straw lash in one hand, and in the other a club that bristled all over with sharp pegs, to which bits of fat bacon, loaves and bulky packets were stuck. In the rear walked Michael, the organist’s boy, playing the fife, and a number of youngsters with sticks, tapping on the floor and shouting vociferously. The bear-leader “praised God,” crowed, bleated, neighed like a rampant stallion, and, lifting up his voice, spoke thus: “We, bear-leaders, come from a foreign clime, beyond the ocean and the endless forests, where men walk upside down, use sausages for palings, and fire to cool themselves; where pots are set to boil in the sun, and where the sky rains vodka: thence have we brought this savage bear! It has been told us that there are in this village wealthy husbandmen, good-natured housewives—and fair maidens too. And therefore from that foreign clime have we come, beyond the Danube, to obtain kind treatment, have our needs supplied, and something given us for our pains!—Amen.” “Show, then, what ye can do,” said Klemba; “peradventure there may be something for you in the larder.”