I was with grandmother and little Aunt Natalia. Pale, blue-eyed and stout, she frequently stood still, panting and whispering:

"Oh, I can't go any farther!"

"Why did they trouble you to come?" grumbled grandmother angrily. "They are a silly lot!"

I did not like either the grown-up people nor the children; I felt myself to be a stranger in their midst --even grandmother had somehow become estranged and distant.

Most of all I disliked my uncle; I felt at once that he was my enemy, and I was conscious of a certain feeling of cautious curiosity towards him.

We had now arrived at the end of our journey.

At the very top, perched on the right slope, stood the first building in the street--a squat, one-storied house, decorated with dirty pink paint, with a narrow overhanging roof and bow-windows. Looked at from the street it appeared to be a large house, but the interior, with its gloomy, tiny rooms, was cramped. Everywhere, as on the landing-stage, angry people strove together, and a vile smell pervaded the whole place.

I went out into the yard. That also was unpleasant. It was strewn with large, wet cloths and lumbered with tubs, all containing muddy water, of the same hue, in which other cloths lay soaking. In the corner of a half-tumbled-down shed the logs burned brightly in a stove, upon which something was boiling or baking, and an unseen person uttered these strange words:

"Santaline, fuchsin, vitriol!"

CHAPTER II

THEN began and flowed on with astonishing rapidity an intense, varied, inexpressibly strange life. It reminded me of a crude story, well told by a good-natured but irritatingly truthful genius. Now, in recalling the past, I myself find it difficult to believe, at this distance of time, that things really were as they were, and I have longed to dispute or reject the facts-- )( the cruelty of the drab existence of an unwelcome relation is too painful to contemplate. But truth is stronger than pity, and besides, I am writing not about myself but about that narrow, stifling environment of \ unpleasant impressions in which lived--aye, and to this day lives--the average Russian of this class.

My grandfather's house simply seethed with mutual hostility; all the grown people were infected and even the children were inoculated with it. I had learned, from overhearing grandmother's conversation, that my mother arrived upon the very day when her brothers demanded the distribution of the property from their father. Her unexpected return made their desire for this all the keener and stronger, because they were afraid that my mother would claim the dowry intended for her, but withheld by my grandfather because she had married secretly and against his wish. My uncles considered that this dowry ought to be divided amongst them all. Added to this, they had been quarreling violently for a long time among themselves as to who should open a workshop in the town, or on the Oka in the village of Kunavin.'

One day, very shortly after our arrival, a quarrel broke out suddenly at dinner-time. My uncles started to their feet and, leaning across the table, began to shout and yell at grandfather, snarling and shaking themselves like dogs; and grandfather, turning very red, rapped on the table with a spoon and cried in a piercing tone of voice, like the crowing of a cock: "I will turn you out of doors!"

With her face painfully distorted, grandmother said: "Give them what they ask, Father; then you will have some peace."

"Be quiet, simpleton!" shouted my grandfather with flashing eyes; and it was wonderful, seeing how small he was, that he could yell with such deafening effect.

My mother rose from the table, and going calmly to the window, turned her back upon us all.

Suddenly Uncle Michael struck his brother on the face with the back of his hand. The latter, with a howl of rage, grappled with him; both rolled on the floor growling, gasping for breath and abusing each other. The children began to cry, and my Aunt Natalia, who was with child, screamed wildly; my mother seized her round the body and dragged her somewhere out of the way; the lively little nursemaid, Eugenia, drove the children out of the kitchen; chairs were knocked down; the young, broad-shouldered foreman, Tsiganok, sat on Uncle Michael's back, while the head of the works, Gregory Ivanovitch, a bald-headed, bearded man with colored spectacles, calmly bound up my uncle's hands with towels.

Turning his head and letting his thin, straggly, black beard trail on the floor, Uncle Michael cursed horribly, and grandfather, running round the table, exclaimed bitterly: "And these are brothers! . . . Blood relations! . . . Shame on you!"

At the beginning of the quarrel I had jumped on to the stove in terror; and thence, with painful amazement, I had watched grandmother as she washed Uncle Jaakov's battered face in a small basin of water, while he cried and stamped his feet, and she said in a sad voice: "Wicked creatures! You are nothing better than a family of wild beasts. When will you come to your senses?"

Grandfather, dragging his torn shirt over his shoulder, called out to her: "So you have brought wild animals into the world, eh, old woman?"

When Uncle Jaakov went out, grandmother retired to a comer and, quivering with grief, prayed: "Holy Mother of God, bring my children to their senses."

Grandfather stood beside her, and, glancing at the table, on which everything was upset or spilled, said softly:

"When you think of them, Mother, and then of the little one they pester Varia about . . . who has the best nature?"

"Hold your tongue, for goodness' sake! Take off that shirt and I will mend it. . .