24 ([return])
[ I have it on the authority of one who was of the party that it actually took place at the house of a celebrated living poet in St. Petersburg. The lost cap belonged to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who immediately wrote a much-discussed article in an important newspaper under the title of “What has become of our Cap?” The above is an actual quotation from it. The sarcastic remark about “throwing back the enemy” is aimed at those “patriots” who used to say that all Russians had to do to repel foreign enemies was to throw their caps at them.—Translator.]
25 ([return])
[ The second of the novels under the general head of “The Created Legend” deals with the previous existence of Elisaveta when she was the Queen Ortruda of the United Isles in the Mediterranean, and her consort was Prince Tancred, now Trirodov. She died from suffocation in a volcanic eruption, after a vain effort to help her people. The author draws a curious parallel, not only with regard to these two characters, but has also a revolution as the background; it is a rather veiled effort to describe over again the events which took place in Russia in 1905.—Translator.]
26 ([return])
[ Unleavened bread of the Passover.]
27 ([return])
[ In a poem in prose which serves as an introduction to his Complete Works, Sologub says: “Born not the first time, and not the first to complete a circle of external transformations, I simply and calmly reveal my soul. I reveal it in the hope that the intimate part of me shall become the universal.”—Translator.]
28 ([return])
[ Readers of “The Little Demon” will have no trouble in recognizing in Ardalyon Borisovitch an old acquaintance—Peredonov.]