Along the village street, between rows of white-plastered cottages, a strange procession is moving along, with wild howls.

A crowd of people is walking along, walking slowly, in dense ranks,—moving like a huge wave, and in front of it strides a miserable little horse, a comically woolly little nag, with head drooping low. As it lifts a fore foot, it shakes its head strangely, as though it wanted to thrust its woolly muzzle into the dust of the road, and when it moves a hind foot, its crupper settles down toward the earth, and it seems as though the horse were on the point of falling.

Bound to the front of the peasant cart, with a rope about her wrists, is a small, entirely nude woman, almost a girl in years. She walks rather strangely—sideways, her head, with its thick, dishevelled hair of a dark chestnut hue, is raised and thrown a little backward, her eyes are opened widely and are gazing off into the distance with a dull, unintelligent look, which has nothing human about it. Her whole body is covered with blue and dark-red spots, both circular and oblong; her left breast, elastic, maidenly, is cleft, and from it the blood is dripping.... It forms a crimson streak on her body, and down along the left leg to the knee, while on her lower leg it is concealed by a light-brown coating of dust It seems as though a long, narrow strip of skin had been flayed from the woman's body, which must have undergone a prolonged beating with a club,—it is monstrously swollen and horribly blue all over.

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The woman's feet, small and well-shaped, hardly tread the dust; her whole body is terribly bent over, and sways from side to side, and it is impossible to understand how she can still stand on her legs, thickly covered, like her whole body, with bruises, why she does not fall to the ground, and, suspended by her arms, is not dragged after the cart along the hot, dusty road....

And in the cart stands a tall peasant in a white shirt, a black lambskin cap, from beneath which, intersecting his brow, hangs a lock of bright-red hair; in one hand he grasps the reins, in the other a whip, and methodically bestows one lash upon the back of the nag, and one upon the body of the little woman, already beaten until it has lost the semblance of a human being. The eyes of the red-headed man are suffused with blood, and gleam with evil triumph. His hair blends with their green............