The Duel

“In a little town on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, Laevsky, an idle young official, is sick of the married woman he ran away with. A cold, brilliant zoologist, von Koren, despises him as a parasite who ought to be destroyed for the good of mankind. Their hatred ends in a duel at dawn — watched, from the bushes, by a young deacon who cannot stop laughing.”