matters worse someone passed Sonia, from the other end of the table, a plate with two hearts pierced with an arrow, cut out of black bread. Katerina Ivanovna flushed crimson and at once said aloud across the table that the man who sent it was “a drunken ass!”

Amalia Ivanovna was foreseeing something amiss, and at the same time deeply wounded by Katerina Ivanovna’s haughtiness, and to restore the good-humour of the company and raise herself in their esteem she began, apropos of nothing, telling a story about an acquaintance of hers “Karl from the chemist’s,” who was driving one night in a cab, and that “the cabman wanted him to kill, and Karl very much begged him not to kill, and wept and clasped hands, and frightened and from fear pierced his heart.” Though Katerina Ivanovna