all up? What a soup it is! How rich! It looks as if it had been sprinkled with
amber. Here is a bream; there a lump of sterlet. Take a little more, dear, kind
friend. Just another spoonful. Wife, come and entreat him!"
Thus does Demian feast his neighbour Phocas, not giving him a moment's
breathing time.
Phocas feels the moisture trickling down his forehead. Still he takes the soup,
attacks it with all the strength he has left, and somehow manages to swallow the
whole of it.
"That's the sort of friend I like!" cries Demian. "I can't bear people who require
pressing. But now, dear friend, take just this one little plateful more."
But, on hearing this, our poor Phocas, much as he liked fish soup, catching hold
of his cap and sash, runs away home, not once looking behind him.
Nor from that day to this has he crossed Demian's threshold.
The Wolf and Its Cub
A Wolf, which had begun to accustom its Cub to support itself by its father's
profession, sent it one day to prowl about the skirts of the wood. At the same
time it ordered it to give all its attention to seeing whether it would not be
possible, even at the cost of sinning a little, for them both to make their breakfast
or dinner at the expense of some shepherd or other. The pupil returns home, and
says:
"Come along, quick! Our dinner awaits us: nothing could possibly be safer.
There are sheep feeding at the foot of yon hill, each one fatter than the other. We
have only to choose which to carry off and eat; and the flock is so large that it
would be difficult to count it over again——"
"Wait a minute," says the Wolf. "First of all I must know what sort of a man the
shepherd of this flock is.
"It is said that he is a good one—painstaking and intelligent. But I went round
the flock on all sides, and examined the dogs: they are not at all fat, and seem to