A peasant woman with an enormous, tightly tied-in stomach and a stupid, troubled face came into the room, and, having bowed low to the Count, she spread a white table-cloth on the table. Mit'ka followed her carefully carrying a tray with various hors d'œuvres. A minute later, we had vodka, rum, cheese, and a dish of some sort of roasted bird on the table before us. The Count drank a glass of vodka, but he would not eat anything. The Pole smelt the bird mistrustfully, and then began to carve it.
“The rain has begun! Look!” I said to Olenka, who had re-entered the room.
“The girl in red” came up to the window where I was standing, and at that very moment we were illuminated by a white flash of light.… There was a fearful crash above us, and it appeared to me that something large and heavy had been torn from the sky and had fallen to earth with a terrible racket.… The window panes and the wineglasses that were standing before the Count jingled and emitted their tinkling sound.… The thunderclap was a loud one.
“Are you afraid of thunder-storms?” I asked Olenka.
She only pressed her cheek to her round shoulders and looked at me with childish confidence.
“I'm afraid,” she whispered after a moment's reflection. “My mother was killed by a storm.… The newspapers even wrote about it.… My mother was going through the fields, crying.… She had a very bitter life in this world. God had compassion on her and killed her with His heavenly electricity.”
“How do you know that there is electricity there?”
“I have learned.… Do you know? People who have been killed by a storm or in war, or who have died after a difficult confinement go to paradise.… This is not written anywhere in books, but it is true. My mother is now in paradise! I think the thunder will also kill me some day, and I shall go to paradise too.… Are you a cultivated man?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will not laugh.… This is how I should like to die: to dress in the most costly fashionable frock, like the one I saw the other day on our rich lady, the landowner Sheffer; to put bracelets on my arms.… Then to go to the very summit of the ‘Stone Grave’ and allow myself to be killed by the lightning, so that all the people could see it.… A terrible peal of thunder, and then, you know, the end!”