Madam, a friend of mine--a most honourable man--has written a Krylov's fable, called 'The Cockroach.' May I read it ?" "You want to read some fable of Krylov's ?" "No, it's not a fable of Krylov's I want to read.

It's my fable, my own composition.

Believe me, madam, without offence I'm not so uneducated and depraved as not to understand that Russia can boast of a great fable-writer, Krylov, to whom the Minister of Education has raised a monument in the Summer Gardens for the diversion of the young.

Here, madam, you ask me why?
The answer is at the end of this fable, in letters of fire." "Read your fable." "Lived a cockroach in the world Such was his condition, In a glass he chanced to fall Full of fly-perdition." "Heavens! What does it mean ?" cried Varvara Petrovna.
"That's when flies get into a glass in the summer-time," the captain explained hurriedly with the irritable impatience of an author interrupted in reading.

"Then it is perdition to the flies, any fool can understand.
Don't interrupt, don't interrupt.