His glasses
shivered into bits. He uttered a shriek, circled round, and fell with
his face against one of the iron bars, his one remaining eye wide
open. He clawed the ground with his outstretched hands as if trying to
support himself.
The officer, who had turned green, rushed toward him, and senselessly
thrust the revolver against his neck, and fired twice. Andersen
stretched out on the ground.
The soldiers left quickly. But Andersen remained pressed flat to the
ground. The index finger of his left hand continued to quiver for
about ten seconds.
THE OUTRAGE--A TRUE STORY
BY ALEKSANDR I. KUPRIN
It was five o'clock on a July afternoon. The heat was terrible. The
whole of the huge stone-built town breathed out heat like a glowing
furnace. The glare of the white-walled house was insufferable. The
asphalt pavements grew soft and burned the feet. The shadows of the
acacias spread over the cobbled road, pitiful and weary. They too
seemed hot. The sea, pale in the sunlight, lay heavy and immobile as
one dead. Over the streets hung a white dust.
In the foyer of one of the private theatres a small committee of local
barristers who had undertaken to conduct the cases of those who had
suffered in the last pogrom against the Jews was reaching the end of
its daily task.
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