he had only just brought about so resolutely. He thought, too, about his dependents. When he went out of the house, he had not locked the gate, and so had left them free to go whither they would.
He had not gone a mile into the country when he heard steps behind him. He looked round and angrily clasped his hands. The horse and Lyska, with their heads drooping and their tails between their legs, were quietly walking after him.
'Go back!' he waved to them.
They stopped, looked at one another, looked at him. He went on, they followed him. Then he stopped and began ruminating. It was impossible to go to his great-niece Glasha, whom he hardly knew, with these creatures; he did not want to go back and shut them up, and, indeed, he could not shut them up, because the gate was no use.
'To die of hunger in the shed,' thought Zotov. 'Hadn't I really better take them to Ignat?'
Ignat's hut stood on the town pasture-ground, a hundred paces from the flagstaff. Though he had not quite made up his mind, and did not know what to do, he turned towards it. His head was giddy and there was a darkness before his eyes. . . .
He remembers little of what happened in the slaughterer's yard. He has a memory of a sickening, heavy smell of hides and the savoury steam of the cabbage-soup Ignat was sipping when he went in to him. As in a dream he saw Ignat, who made him wait two hours, slowly preparing something, changing his clothes, talking to some women about corrosive sublimate; he remembered the horse was put into a stand, after which there was the sound of two dull thuds, one of a blow on the skull, the other of the fall of a heavy body. When Lyska, seeing the death of her friend, flew at Ignat, barking shrilly, there was the sound of a third blow that cut short the bark abruptly. Further, Zotov remembers that in his drunken foolishness, seeing the two corpses, he went up to the stand, and put his own forehead ready for a blow.
And all that day his eyes were dimmed by a haze, and he could not even see his own fingers.
WHO WAS TO BLAME?
As my uncle Pyotr Demyanitch, a lean, bilious collegiate councillor, exceedingly like a stale smoked fish with a stick through it, was getting ready to go to the high school, where he taught Latin, he noticed that the corner of his grammar was nibbled by mice.
'I say, Praskovya,' he said, going into the kitchen and addressing the cook, 'how is it we have got mice here? Upon my word! yesterday my top hat was nibbled, to-day they have disfigured my Latin grammar . . . . At this rate they will soon begin eating my clothes!
'What can I do? I did not bring them in!' answered Praskovya.
'We must do something! You had better get a cat, hadn't you?'
'I've got a cat, but what good is it?'
And Praskovya pointed to the corner where a white kitten, thin as a match, lay curled up asleep beside a broom.
'Why is it no good?' asked Pyotr Demyanitch.
'It's young yet, and foolish. It's not two months old yet.'
'H'm. . . . Then it must be trained. It had much better be learning instead of lying there.'
Saying this, Pyotr Demyanitch sighed with a careworn air and went out of the kitchen. The kitten raised his head, looked lazily after him, and shut his eyes again.
The kitten lay awake thinking. Of what? Unacquainted with real life, having no store of accumulated impressions, his mental processes could only be instinctive, and he could but picture life in accordance with the conceptions that he had inherited, together with his flesh and blood, from his ancestors, the tigers (
When the saucer had vanished into obscurity a piece of meat appeared, dropped by Praskovya; the meat ran away with a cowardly squeak, but the kitten made a bound and got his claws into it. . . . Everything that rose before the imagination of the young dreamer had for its starting-point leaps, claws, and teeth. . . The soul of another is darkness, and a cat's soul more than most, but how near the visions just described are to the truth may be seen from the following fact: under the influence of his day-dreams the kitten suddenly leaped up, looked with flashing eyes at Praskovya, ruffled up his coat, and making one bound, thrust his claws into the cook's skirt. Obviously he was born a mouse catcher, a worthy son of his bloodthirsty ancestors. Fate had destined him to be the terror of cellars, store-rooms and cornbins, and had it not been for education . . . we will not anticipate, however.
On his way home from the high school, Pyotr Demyanitch went into a general shop and bought a mouse-trap for fifteen kopecks. At dinner he fixed a little bit of his rissole on the hook, and set the trap under the sofa, where there were heaps of the pupils' old exercise-books, which Praskovya used for various domestic purposes. At six o'clock in the evening, when the worthy Latin master was sitting at the table correcting his pupils' exercises, there was a sudden 'klop!' so loud that my uncle started and dropped his pen. He went at once to the sofa and took out the trap. A neat little mouse, the size of a thimble, was sniffing the wires and trembling with fear.
'Aha,' muttered Pyotr Demyanitch, and he looked at the mouse malignantly, as though he were about to give him a bad mark. 'You are cau—aught, wretch! Wait a bit! I'll teach you to eat my grammar!'
Having gloated over his victim, Poytr Demyanitch put the mouse-trap on the floor and called:
'Praskovya, there's a mouse caught! Bring the kitten here!
'I'm coming,' responded Praskovya, and a minute later she came in with the descendant of tigers in her arms.
'Capital!' said Pyotr Demyanitch, rubbing his hands. 'We will give him a lesson. . . . Put him down opposite the mouse-trap . . . that's it. . . . Let him sniff it and look at it. . . . That's it. . . .'
The kitten looked wonderingly at my uncle, at his arm-chair, sniffed the mouse-trap in bewilderment, then, frightened probably by the glaring lamplight and the attention directed to him, made a dash and ran in terror to the door.
'Stop!' shouted my uncle, seizing him by the tail, 'stop, you rascal!
He's afraid of a mouse, the idiot! Look! It's a mouse! Look! Well?
Look, I tell you!'
Pyotr Demyanitch took the kitten by the scruff of the neck and pushed him with his nose against the mouse- trap.
'Look, you carrion! Take him and hold him, Praskovya. . . . Hold him opposite the door of the trap. . . . When I let the mouse out, you let him go instantly. . . . Do you hear? . . . Instantly let go! Now!'
My uncle assumed a mysterious expression and lifted the door of the trap. . . . The mouse came out irresolutely, sniffed the air, and flew like an arrow under the sofa. . . . The kitten on being released darted under the table with his tail in the air.
'It has got away! got away!' cried Pyotr Demyanitch, looking ferocious. 'Where is he, the scoundrel? Under the table? You wait. . .'
My uncle dragged the kitten from under the table and shook him in the air.
'Wretched little beast,' he muttered, smacking him on the ear. 'Take that, take that! Will you shirk it next time? Wr-r-r-etch. . . .'
Next day Praskovya heard again the summons.
'Praskovya, there is a mouse caught! Bring the kitten here!'
After the outrage of the previous day the kitten had taken refuge under the stove and had not come out all night. When Praskovya pulled him out and, carrying him by the scruff of the neck into the study, set him down before the mouse-trap, he trembled all over and mewed piteously.
'Come, let him feel at home first,' Pyotr Demyanitch commanded. 'Let him look and sniff. Look and learn! Stop, plague take you!' he shouted, noticing that the kitten was backing away from the mouse-trap. 'I'll thrash you!
