Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !

Updated: June 20, 2025


"Tell the truth, I say, or I'll kill you!" Ivan Mironov kept silent, trying to avoid the blows by stooping. Stepan hit him twice more with his long arm. Ivan Mironov remained silent, turning his head backwards and forwards. "Beat him, all of you!" cried the bailiff, and the whole crowd rushed upon Ivan Mironov.

By the holy Cross and the Gospel, he swore that he spoke the whole truth. The case was decided against Ivan Mironov, who was sentenced to pay five roubles for expenses. This sum Eugene Mihailovich generously paid for him.

Before dismissing Ivan Mironov, the judge severely admonished him, saying he ought to take care in the future not to accuse respectable people, and that he also ought to be thankful that he was not forced to pay the costs, and that he had escaped a prosecution for slander, for which he would have been condemned to three months' imprisonment.

In his drunken state Ivan Mironov was continually thinking, not only of the man who had wronged him, but of all the rich people who live on robbing the poor. One day he had a drink with some peasants from the suburbs of Podolsk, and was walking home together with them. On the way the peasants, who were completely drunk, told him they had stolen a horse from a peasant's cottage.

"Why, are we drunk?" exclaimed Pavel. "We are simply going to march along the streets with flags, and sing songs," said the Little Russian. "You'll have a chance to hear our songs. They're our confession of faith." "I know your confession of faith," said Mironov thoughtfully. "I read your papers. You, Nilovna," he exclaimed, smiling at the mother with knowing eyes, "are you going to revolt, too?"

Ivan Mironov got angry, and began to abuse the horse-thieves. "What a shame!" he said. "A horse is like a brother to the peasant. And you robbed him of it? It is a great sin, I tell you. If you go in for stealing horses, steal them from the landowners. They are worse than dogs, and deserve anything."

"Well, and now let us sit down to work," he said, taking his place at one of the whist-tables when his turn came, and beginning to shuffle the cards. EUGENE MIHAILOVICH had actually used the coupon to buy firewood from the peasant Ivan Mironov, who had thought of setting up in business on the seventeen roubles he possessed.

They were stopped by Mironov, a modest, elderly man, respected by everybody for his clean, sober life. "Not working either, Daniil Ivanovich?" Pavel asked. "My wife is going to be confined. Well, and such an exciting day, too," Mironov responded, staring fixedly at the comrades. He said to them in an undertone: "Boys, I hear you're going to make an awful row smash the superintendent's windows."

The thought that he might himself be a millionaire like Mironov, who began with nothing, so excited Vasili Andreevich that he felt the need of talking to somebody. But there was no one to talk to.... If only he could have reached Goryachkin he would have talked to the landlord and shown him a thing or two. 'Just see how it blows!

The village agreed to kill him. I only gave the final stroke. What is the use of inflicting unnecessary sufferings on a man?" The judges were astonished at Stepan's wonderful coolness in narrating the story of his crime how the peasants fell upon Ivan Mironov, and how he had given the final stroke. Stepan actually did not see anything particularly revolting in this murder.

Word Of The Day

offeire

Others Looking