Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/78

54 The young man smiled. He took out a hundred rouble note in addition.

"More than this I am not authorised to give," he remarked, amiably. ‘"At the end of a month, pray receive the next instalment."

Saranin ran about the room.

"In the window! In the window!" he kept screaming. "Cursed Armenian, what did you do to me?"

And suddenly at that very moment he shrank by about three inches.

Useless were Saranin's tears and hig lamentations?—what did Strigal and his associates care about them?

They paid. They effectuated their rights. The ruthless rights of capital.

The power of capital provides even the court councillor and knight with a position completely in accordance with his precise dimensions, but not in the least harmonising with his pride. Dressed up in the latest fashion, the pigmy runs to and fro in the window of the fashion emporium,—now feasting his gaze on the fair ladies of such colossal size!—now spitefully threatening the gleeful children with his fists.