ia can boast of a great
fable-writer, Krylov, to whom the Minister of Education has raised a
monument in the Summer Gardens for the diversion of the young. Here,
madam, you ask me why? The answer is at the end of this fable, in
letters of fire."

"Read your fable."

"Lived a cockroach in the world
Such was his condition,
In a glass he chanced to fall
Full of fly-perdition."

"Heavens! What does it mean?" cried Varvara Petrovna. "That's when flies
get into a glass in the summer-time," the captain explained hurriedly
with the irritable impatience of an author interrupted in reading. "Then
it is perdition to the flies, any fool can understand. Don't interrupt,
don't interrupt. You'll see, you'll see...." He kept waving his arms.

"But he squeezed against the flies,
They woke up and cursed him,
Raised to Jove their angry cries;
'The glass is full to bursting!'
In the middle of the din
Came along Nikifor,
Fine old man, and looking in...

* From Lebyed, a Swan.

I haven't quite finished it. But no matter, I'll tell it in words,"
the captain rattled on. "Nikifor takes the glass, and in spite of their
outcry empties away the whole stew, flies, and beetles and all, into the
pig pail, which ought to have been done long ago. But observe, madam,
observe, the cockroach doesn't complain. That's the answer to your
question, why?" he cried triumphantly. "'The cockroach does not
complain.' As for Nikifor he typifies nature," he added, speaking
rapidly and walking complacently about the room.

Varvara Petrovna was terribly angry.

"And allow me to ask you about that money said to have been received
from Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, and not to have been given to you, about
which you dared to accuse a person belonging to my household."

"It's a slander!" roared Lebyadkin, flinging up his right hand
tragically.

"No, it's not a slander."

"Madam, there are circumstances that force one to endure family disgrace
rather than proclaim the truth aloud. Lebyadkin will not blab, madam!"

He seemed dazed; he was carried away; he felt his importance; he
certainly had some fancy in his mind. By now he wanted to insult some
one, to do something nasty to show his power.

"Ring, please, Stepan Trofimovitch," Varvara Petrovna asked him.

"Lebyadkin's cunning, madam." he said, winking with his evil smile;
"he's cunning, but he too has a weak spot, he too at times is in the
porta