articulated, "Vachhh!" and tears slowly
ran down his cheeks and trickled on his greenish coat.

And Yakov lay in bed all the rest of the day grieving. In the
evening, when the priest confessing him asked, Did he remember any
special sin he had committed? straining his failing memory he thought
again of Marfa's unhappy face, and the despairing shriek of the Jew
when the dog bit him, and said, hardly audibly, "Give the fiddle
to Rothschild."

"Very well," answered the priest.

And now everyone in the town asks where Rothschild got such a fine
fiddle. Did he buy it or steal it? Or perhaps it had come to him
as a pledge. He gave up the flute long ago, and now plays nothing
but the fiddle. As plaintive sounds flow now from his bow, as came
once from his flute, but when he tries to repeat what Yakov played,
sitting in the doorway, the effect is something so sad and sorrowful
that his audience weep, and he himself rolls his eyes and articulates
"Vachhh! . . ." And this new air was so much liked in the town that
the merchants and officials used to be continually sending for
Rothschild and making him play it over and over again a dozen times.

IVAN MATVEYITCH

BETWEEN five and six in the evening. A fairly well-known man of
learning--we will call him simply the man of learning--is sitting
in his study nervously biting his nails.

"It's positively revolting," he says, continually looking at his
watch. "It shows the utmost disrespect for another man's time and
work. In England such a person would not earn a farthing, he would
die of hunger. You wait a minute, when you do come . . . ."

And feeling a craving to vent his wrath and impatience upon someone,
the man of learning goes to the door leading to his wife's room and
knocks.

"Listen, Katya," he says in an indignant voice. "If you see Pyotr
Danilitch, tell him that decent people don't do such things. It's
abominable! He recommends a secretary, and does not know the sort
of man he is recommending! The wretched boy is two or three hours
late with unfailing regularity every day. Do you call that a
secretary? Those two or three hours are more precious to me than
two or three years to other people. When he does come I will swear
at him like a dog, and won't pay him and will kick him out. It's
no use standing on ceremony with people like that!"

"You say that every day, and yet he goes on coming and coming."

"But to-day I have made up my mind. I have lost enough throug