Without Lifting A Finger

Katerina Lvovna was trembling. Her roving gaze became fixed and wild. Her arms reached out somewhere into space once or twice and dropped again. Another moment—and she suddenly began to sway all over, not taking her eyes from the dark waves, bent down, seized Sonetka by the legs, and in one sweep threw the girl and herself overboard. Everyone was petrified with amazement. Katerina Lvovna appeared at the top of a wave and sank again; another wave tossed up Sonetka. “A hook! Throw them a hook!” they shouted on the ferry. A heavy hook on a long rope soared up and fell into the water. Sonetka could no longer be seen. Two seconds later, borne away from the ferry by the swift current, she again flailed her arms; but at the same moment, out of another wave, Katerina Lvovna rose up almost to the waist, threw herself on Sonetka like a strong pike on a soft-finned little roach, and neither of them appeared again.

In the evening, Boris Timofeich ate a bit of kasha with mushrooms and got heartburn; then suddenly there was pain in the pit of his stomach; he was seized with terrible vomiting, and towards morning he died, just as the rats died in his storehouses, Katerina Lvovna having always prepared a special food for them with her own hands, using a dangerous white powder entrusted to her keeping. Katerina Lvovna delivered her Sergei from the old man’s stone larder and, with no shame before people’s eyes, placed him in her husband’s bed to rest from her father-in-law’s beating; and the father-in-law, Boris Timofeich, they buried without second thoughts, according to the Christian rule. Amazingly enough, no one thought anything of it: Boris Timofeich had died, died from eating mushrooms, as many had died from eating them. They buried Boris Timofeich hastily, without even waiting for his son, because the weather was warm, and the man sent to the mill for Zinovy Borisych had not found him there. He ...

 

The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart.  At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner.  His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.  "Come along, papa," she said.  And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead.  Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Monsieur Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing.  When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary's goin...

California Dreamin': Bracing for the Worst, Hoping for the Best. Took a walk on the Boardwalk, as far as 62nd St (where it was closed). Walked back on the "safer side" of Long Beach's "Peninsula" (facing Naples), which isn't as safe as you might think. Beautiful Day in CA.💛 #rlswihart13  #thepeninsula  #longbeach  #hopingforthebest  #readmorepoetry2026💕 "

Each time Leon had to tell her everything that he had done since their last meeting. She asked him for some verses--some verses "for herself," a "love poem" in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in a "Keepsake." This was less from vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity and dissimulation? * From Google AI:

She appears in Madame Bovary (just before Leon meets Emma in the cathedral). Apparently Nabokov made a mistake in ID-ing the biblical dancer -- he thought she was Miriam (who dances in Exodus with a tambourine, after the Israelites safely cross the Red Sea) and not Salome (who dances for Herod's birthday).  Almost certainly the local moniker "Marianne" is an heirloom from the French Revolution.