Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/81

Rh them. But the end came. Of the most ordinary kind. Such as might have been expected.

Saranin diminished continually. Every day they dressed him in new suits,—always smaller.

And suddenly, in the eyes of the marvelling shop-assistants, just as he was putting on some new trousers, he became excessively minute. He tumbled out of the trousers. And he had already become like a pin's head.

A slight draught was blowing. Saranin, minute as a grain of dust, was lifted up in the air. He was twirled round. He mingled with the cloudlets of dust gamboling in the sunbeams. He disappeared.

All search was in vain. Saranin could nowhere be found.

Aglaya, Strigal and Co., the police, the clergy, the authoritics,—all were in the greatest perplexity.

How was the disappearance of Saranin to be formulated?

At last, after communication with the Academy of Sciences, they decided to reckon him as dispatched on a special mission for scientific purposes.

Then they forgot about him.

Saranin was finished with.