three nights running, beneath a window. Hence always they were at pains to remove a dead person feet foremost—though continuing to eat the same quantity of food as before, and to sleep on the bare ground; while, with regard to a howling dog, always they drove away the animal with blows—though continuing to scatter sparks broadcast over tinder-dry floors.
To this day the Russian, though surrounded by a stern, unimaginative world of reality, loves to believe the seductive tales of antiquity. And long will it be before he will have been weaned from that belief. In the same way, as little Oblomov listened to his nurse's legends concerning the Golden Fleece, the great Cassowary Bird, and the cells and secret dungeons of the Enchanted Castle, he became more and more fired to the idea that he too was destined to become the hero of doughty deeds. Tale succeeded to tale, and the nurse pursued her narrative with such ardour and vividness and attractiveness of description that at times her breath choked in her throat. For she too half-believed the legends which she related; so that, during the telling of them, her eyes would shoot fire, her head shake with excitement, and her voice attain an unwonted
