echoed, I thought to
myself with a spasm of joy:

"Ah, many times may I thus walk to greet the spring!"

While Ossip said with a sigh:

"The human soul is a winged thing. Even in sleep it flies."

* * * * *

A winged thing? Yes, and a thing of wonder.

GUBIN

The place where I first saw him was a tavern wherein, ensconced in the
chimney-corner, and facing a table, he was exclaiming stutteringly,
"Oh, I know the truth about you all! Yes, I know the truth about you!"
while standing in a semicircle in front of him, and unconsciously
rendering him more and more excited with their sarcastic
interpolations, were some tradesmen of the superior sort--five in
number. One of them remarked indifferently:

"How should you NOT know the truth about us, seeing that you do nothing
but slander us?"

Shabby, in fact in rags, Gubin at that moment reminded me of a homeless
dog which, having strayed into a strange street, has found itself held
up by a band of dogs of superior strength, and, seized with
nervousness, is sitting back on its haunches and sweeping the dust with
its tail; and, with growls, and occasional barings of its fangs, and
sundry barkings, attempting now to intimidate its adversaries, and now
to conciliate them. Meanwhile, having perceived the stranger's
helplessness and insignificance, the native pack is beginning to
moderate its attitude, in the conviction that, though continued
maintenance of dignity is imperative, it is not worthwhile to pick a
quarrel so long as an occasional yelp be vented in the stranger's face.

"To whom are you of any use?" one of the tradesmen at length inquired.

"Not a man of us but may be of use."

"To whom, then?"...

I had long since grown familiar with tavern disputes concerning
verities, and not infrequently seen those disputes develop into open
brawls; but never had I permitted myself to be drawn into their toils,
or to be set wandering amid their tangles like a blind man negotiating
a number of hillocks. Moreover, just before this encounter with Gubin,
I had arrived at a dim surmise that when such differences were carried
to the point of madness and bloodshed. Really, they constituted an
expression of the unmeaning, hopeless, melancholy life that is lived in
the wilder and more remote districts of Russia--of the life that is
lived on swampy banks of dingy rivers, and in our smaller and more
God-forgotten towns. For it would seem that in su