"I may tell you that the General had a niece named Valentina Ignatievna. And she too was a most remarkable woman."
"Remarkable for what?"
"Remarkable for EVERYTHING."
At this moment there came floating over our heads through the damp-saturated air a cormorant—one of those voracious birds which so markedly lack intelligence. And somehow the whistling of its powerful pinions awoke in me an unpleasant reminiscent thought.
"Pray continue," I said to my fellow traveller.
"And each night, as I lay on the floor (I may mention that never did I climb on to the stove, and to this day I dislike the heat of one), it was her custom to sit with her legs dangling over the edge of the top, and tell me stories. And though the room would be too dark for me to see her face, I could yet see the things of which she would be speaking. And at times, as these tales came floating down to me, I would find them so horrible as to be forced to cry out, 'Oh, Mamka, Mamka, DON'T!...' To this hour I have no love for the bizarre, and am but a poor hand at remembering it. And as strange as her stories was my mother. Eventually she died of an attack of blood-poisoning and, though but forty, had become grey-headed. Yes, and so terribly did she smell after her death that everyone in the kitchen was constrained to exclaim at the odour."
"Yes, but what of the devils?"
"You must wait a minute or two."
Ever as we proceeded, clinging, fantastic branches kept closing in upon the path, so that we appeared to be walking through a sea of murmuring verdure. And from time to time a bough would flick us as though to say: "Speed, speed, or the rain will be upon you!"
If anything, however, my companion slackened his pace as in measured, sing-song accents he continued: