affairs of these unfortunate lovers). Then, regardless of her
uncle's anger and blows, she would stealthily make her way to the
police-station, there to visit and console her swain.

Excuse me, reader, for introducing you to such company. Nevertheless, if
the cords of love and compassion have not wholly snapped in your soul,
you will find, even in that maidservants' room, something which may
cause them to vibrate again.

So, whether you please to follow me or not, I will return to the alcove
on the staircase whence I was able to observe all that passed in that
room. From my post I could see the stove-couch, with, upon it, an iron,
an old cap-stand with its peg bent crooked, a wash-tub, and a basin.
There, too, was the window, with, in fine disorder before it, a piece
of black wax, some fragments of silk, a half-eaten cucumber, a box of
sweets, and so on. There, too, was the large table at which SHE used
to sit in the pink cotton dress which I admired so much and the
blue handkerchief which always caught my attention so. She would be
sewing-though interrupting her work at intervals to scratch her head
a little, to bite the end of her thread, or to snuff the candle--and I
would think to myself: "Why was she not born a lady--she with her blue
eyes, beautiful fair hair, and magnificent bust? How splendid she would
look if she were sitting in a drawing-room and dressed in a cap with
pink ribbons and a silk gown--not one like Mimi's, but one like the gown
which I saw the other day on the Tverski Boulevard!" Yes, she would work
at the embroidery-frame, and I would sit and look at her in the mirror,
and be ready to do whatsoever she wanted--to help her on with her mantle
or to hand her food. As for Basil's drunken face and horrid figure in
the scanty coat with the red shirt showing beneath it, well, in his
every gesture, in his every movement of his back, I seemed always to see
signs of the humiliating chastisements which he had undergone.

"Ah, Basil! AGAIN?" cried Masha on one occasion as she stuck her needle
into the pincushion, but without looking up at the person who was
entering.

"What is the good of a man like HIM?" was Basil's first remark.

"Yes. If only he would say something DECISIVE! But I am powerless in the
matter--I am all at odds and ends, and through his fault, too."

"Will you have some tea?" put in Madesha (another servant).

"No, thank you.--But why does he hate me so, that old thief of an uncle
of y