Yes, at such times one desires to taste life to the full, and so to live that the ancient rocks shall smile, and the sea's white horses prance the higher, as one's mouth acclaims the earth in such a paean that, intoxicated with the laudation, it shall unfold its riches with added bountifulness and display more and more manifest beauty under the spur of the love expressed by one of its creatures, expressed by a human being who feels for the earth what he would feel for a woman, and yearns to fertilise the same to ever-increasing splendour. Nevertheless, words are as heavy as stones, and after felling fancy to the ground, serve but to heap her grey coffin-lid, and cause one, as one stands contemplating the tomb, to laugh in sheer self-derision... . Suddenly, plunged in dreams as I walked along, I heard through the plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam the unfamiliar words: "Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan. Good devils are these, not bad." "How does Christ get on with them?" I asked. "Christ? He does not enter into the matter." "Is He hostile to them?" "Is He HOSTILE to them? How could He be? Devils of that kind are devils to themselves-devils of a decent sort. Besides, to no one is Christ hostile" .............................. . . . . . [In the Russian this hiatus occurs as marked.] As though unable any longer to brave the assault of the billows, the path suddenly swerved towards the bushes on our right, and, in doing so, caused the cloud-wrapped mountains to shift correspondingly to our immediate front, where the masses of vapour were darkening as though rain were probable. Kalinin's discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from time to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils. "The locality is not without its perils," once he remarked. "For hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago Maliar of Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these parts. Probably he was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances escape my memory." So thickly was the surface of the sea streaked with cloud-shadows that it bore the appearance of being in mourning, of being decked in the funeral colours of black and white. Afar off, Gudaout lay lashed with foam, while constantly objects like snowdrifts kept gliding towards it. "Tell me more about those devils," I said at length. "Well, if you wish. But what exactly am I to tell you about them?" "All that you may happen to know." "Oh, I know EVERYTHING about them." To this my companion added a wink. Then he continued: