LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 13 



the road. The outline of a forest was now seen on 

 the horizon ; it came nearer and nearer, and soon the 

 coach stopped before the forest inn. Everybody woke 

 up, the children were delighted to be able to run about 

 and stretch their limbs. They begged their mother 

 to let them go into the forest whilst the horses were 

 resting, and obtained permission to go, but not too 

 far, and with Petrushka. 



They ate an appetising lunch at the inn and the 

 children ran off at a gallop. Everything delighted 

 them, the underwood, grass patches, ravines, and 

 mysterious paths. But they had hardly entered the 

 forest when they heard a sinister, confused rumour 

 in the distance ; they stopped to listen, and recog- 

 nised the voices of a tumultuous crowd. The chil- 

 dren's joyous excitement fell ; frightened and docile, 

 they hastened to return to the inn, from which Emilia 

 Lvovna, looking anxiously out of a window, was 

 making urgent signs to them to return. The coach 

 was still standing without horses, and, a little farther 

 off, the latter were surrounded by a crowd of peasants, 

 of whom many were completely drunk. They shouted 

 vociferously, and closely pressed the coachman and 

 the postilion, threatening to confiscate the horses and 

 detain the travellers if they were not given a ransom 

 of a thousand roubles. 



Terrified, the children clung to their distracted 

 mother ; Ilia felt her trembling, and his own little heart 

 fluttered like a bird that has been caught. The 

 drunken peasants appeared to him like monstrous 

 ogres or brigands about to capture, perhaps kill, his 

 family and himself ; he could hardly keep back his 

 tears. Already the peasants had bound the coach- 

 man and the postilion and were taking away the 



