 An Avenger by Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett. Shortly after finding his wife in flagrante delicto, Fyodor Fyodorovich Sigaev was standing in Schmucken companies, the gunsmiths, selecting a suitable revolver. His countenance expressed wrath, grief, and unalterable determination. I know what I must do, he was thinking. The sanctities of the home are outraged. Honour is trampled in the mud, vice is triumphant, and therefore as a citizen and a man of honour I must be their Avenger. First I will kill her and her lover, and then myself. He had not yet chosen a revolver or killed anyone, but already in imagination he saw three bloodstained corpses, broken skulls, brains oozing from them, the commotion, the crowd of gaping spectators, the post-mortem. With the malignant joy of an insulted man he pictured the horror of the relations and the public, the agony of the traitors, and was mentally reading leading articles on the destruction of the traditions of the home. The shopman, a sprightly little French-ified figure with rounded belly and white waistcoat, displayed the revolvers, and smiling respectfully and scraping with his little feet, observed, I would advise you, monsieur, to take this superb revolver, the Smith and Wesson pattern, the last word in the science of firearms, triple action with ejector, kills at six hundred paces, central sight. Let me draw your attention, monsieur, to the beauty of the finish. The most fashionable system, monsieur, we sell a dozen every day for burglars, wolves, and lovers. A very correct and powerful action hits at a great distance and kills wife and lover with one bullet. As for suicide, monsieur, I don't know a better pattern. The shopman pulled and cocked the trigger, breathed on the barrel, took aim, and effected to be breathless with delight. Looking at his ecstatic countenance, one might have supposed that he would readily have put a bullet through his brains if he had only possessed a revolver of such a superb pattern as a Smith and Wesson. And what price, asked Sugaev? Forty-five rubles, monsieur. That's too dear for me. In that case, monsieur, let me offer you another make, some more cheaper. Here, if you'll kindly look, we have an immense choice at all prices. I hear, for instance, this revolver of the Lefouché pattern costs only eighteen rubles, but the shopman pursed up his face contemptuously. But, monsieur, it's an old-fashioned make. They are only bought by hysterical ladies or the mentally deficient. To commit suicide or shoot one's wife with a Lefouché revolver is considered bad form nowadays. Smith and Wesson is the only pattern that's correct style. I don't want to shoot myself or to kill anyone, said Sugaev, lying sullenly. I'm buying it simply for a country cottage, to frighten away burglars. That's not our business, what object you have in buying it. The shopman smiled, dropping his eyes discreetly. If we were to investigate the object in each case, monsieur, we should have to close our shop. To frighten burglars Lefouché is not a suitable pattern, monsieur, for it goes off with a faint, muffled sound. I would suggest Mortimer's, the so-called dueling pistol. Shouldn't I challenge him to a duel? Flashed through Sugaev's mind. It's doing him too much honour, though. Beasts like that are killed like dogs. The shopman, swaying gracefully and tripping to and fro on his little feet, still smiling and chattering, displayed before him a heap of revolvers. The most inviting and impressive of all was the Smith and Wesson. Sugaev picked up a pistol of that pattern, gazed blankly at it, and sank into brooding. His imagination pictured how he would blow out their brains, how blood would flow in screams over the rug and the parquet, how the traitorous's legs would twitch in her last agony. But that was not enough for his indignant soul. The picture of blood, wailing and horror, did not satisfy him. He must think of something more terrible. I know. I'll kill myself and him, he thought, but I'll… Sample complete. Ready to continue?