lothes,
soiled with lime, their aprons and their chisels--all this flickered
before him in an inanimate file--a colourful, motley, but dead
cinematographic film.

He had to cut across the New Kishenevsky Market. Suddenly the savoury,
greasy odour of something roasted compelled him to distend his
nostrils. Lichonin recalled that he had not eaten anything since noon
yesterday, and at once felt hunger. He turned to the right, into the
centre of the market.

In the days of his starvings--and he had had to experience them more
than once--he would come here to the market, and for the pitiful
coppers, gotten with difficulty, would buy himself bread and fried
sausage. This was in winter, oftenest of all. The huckstress, wrapped
up in a multiplicity of clothes, usually sat upon a pot of coals for
warmth; while before her, on the iron dripping-pan, hissed and crackled
the thick, home-made sausage, cut into pieces a quarter of a yard in
length, plentifully seasoned with garlic. A piece of sausage usually
cost ten kopecks, the bread two kopecks.

There were very many folk at market to-day. Even at a distance, edging
his way to the familiar, loved stall, Lichonin heard the sounds of
music. Having made his way through the crowd, which in a solid ring
surrounded one of the stalls, he saw a naive and endearing sight, which
may be seen only in the blessed south of Russia. Ten or fifteen
huckstresses, during ordinary times gossips of evil tongue and addicted
to unrestrainable swearing, inexhaustible in its verbal diversity, but
now, evidently, flattering and tender cronies, had started celebrating
even since last evening; had caroused the whole night through and now
had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired
musicians--two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine--were
strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune.
Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring
vodka over one another; others poured it out into glasses and over the
tables; others still, clapping their palms in time with the music,
oh'd, squealed, and danced, squatting in one place. And in the middle
of the ring, upon the cobbles of the pavement, a stout woman of about
forty-five, but still handsome, with red, fleshy lips, with humid,
intoxicated, seemingly unctuous eyes, merrily sparkling from under the
high bows of black, regular, Little Russian eyebrows, was whirling
around and stamping out a