aginary Boles, she
began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts, and other articles
of clothing. Subsequently, about three months after this history
began, they put her in prison for something or other. No doubt by this
time she is dead.

My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, looked pensively up
at the sky, and thus concluded:

Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted of bitter things the
more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round
in the rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of
our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do
not understand this.

And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly--and very cruelly. The
fallen classes, we say. And who are the fallen classes, I should like
to know? They are, first of all, people with the same bones, flesh,
and blood and nerves as ourselves. We have been told this day after
day for ages. And we actually listen--and the devil only knows how
hideous the whole thing is. Or are we completely depraved by the loud
sermonising of humanism? In reality, we also are fallen folks, and, so
far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of
self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough
of this. It is all as old as the hills--so old that it is a shame to
speak of it. Very old indeed--yes, that's what it is!

LAZARUS

BY LEONID ANDREYEV

I

When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the
mysterious thraldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a
long time before any one noticed the evil peculiarities in him that
were later to make his very name terrible. His friends and relatives
were jubilant that he had come back to life. They surrounded him with
tenderness, they were lavish of their eager attentions, spending the
greatest care upon his food and drink and the new garments they made
for him. They clad him gorgeously in the glowing colours of hope and
laughter, and when, arrayed like a bridegroom, he sat at table with
them again, ate again, and drank again, they wept fondly and summoned
the neighbours to look upon the man miraculously raised from the dead.

The neighbours came and were moved with joy. Strangers arrived from
distant cities and villages to worship the miracle. They burst into
stormy exclamations, and buzzed around the house of Mary and Martha,
like so many bees.

That which was new in Lazarus'