ka's mind and soul was plain to him,
as was plain and incontrovertible everything that he conceived; he
wanted at the start to interest Liubka in chemistry and physics.

"The virginally feminine mind," he pondered, "will be astounded, then I
shall gain possession of her attention, and from trifles, from
hocus-pocus, I shall pass on to that which will lead her to the centre
of universal knowledge, where there is no superstition, no prejudices;
where there is only a broad field for the testing of nature."

It must be said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He dragged in
all that came to his hand for the astonishment of Liubka. Once he
brought along for her a large self-made serpent--a long cardboard hose,
filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a harmonica, and tied
tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the serpent for a long time
with crackling jumped over the dining room and the bedroom, filling the
place with smoke and stench. Liubka was scarcely amazed and said that
this was simply fireworks, that she had already seen this, and that you
couldn't astonish her with that. She asked, however, permission to open
the window. Then he brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat's
tail, and in this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge,
although weak, was produced, however.

"Oh, the unclean one take you, Satan!" Liubka began to cry out, having
felt the dry fillip in her little finger.

Then, out of heated peroxide of manganese, mixed with sand, with the
help of a druggist's vial, the gutta-percha end of a syringe, a basin
filled with water, and a jam jar--oxygen was derived. The red-hot cork,
coal and phosphorus burnt in the jar so blindingly that it pained the
eyes. Liubka clapped her palms and squealed out in delight:

"Mister Professor, more! Please, more, more! ..."

But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an
empty champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for precaution
in a towel, Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its neck toward a
burning candle, and when the explosion broke out, as though four
cannons had been fired off at once--an explosion through which the
plastering fell down from the ceiling--then Liubka grew timorous, and,
only getting to rights with difficulty, pronounced with trembling lips,
but with dignity: "You must excuse me now, but since I have a flat of
my own, and I'm not at all a wench any longer, but a decent woman, I'd
ask you therefo