She gazed around her - it was day.

Lo! through the frozen windows play

Aurora's ruddy rays of light -

The door flew open - Olga came,

More blooming than the Boreal flame

And swifter than the swallow's flight.

"Come," she cried, "sister, tell me e'en

Whom you in slumber may have seen."

XXII.

But she, her sister never heeding,

With book in hand reclined in bed,

Page after page continued reading,

But no reply unto her made.

Although her book did not contain

The bard's enthusiastic strain,

Nor precepts sage nor pictures e'en,

Yet neither Virgil nor Racine

Nor Byron, Walter Scott, nor Seneca,

Nor the Journal des Modes, I vouch,

Ever absorbed a maid so much:

Its name, my friends, was Martin Zadeka,

The chief of the Chaldean wise,

Who dreams expound and prophecies.

XXIII.

Brought by a pedlar vagabond

Unto their solitude one day,

This monument of thought profound

Tattiana purchased with a stray

Tome of "Malvina," and but three(56)

And a half rubles down gave she;

Also, to equalise the scales,

She got a book of nursery tales,

A grammar, likewise Petriads two,

Marmontel also, tome the third;

Tattiana every day conferred