dly and clearly to his consciousness.

He lay down and began to drop asleep; and again they were going along
together, singing: "We go on, and on, and on.... We take from life
what is hardest and bitterest in it, and we leave you what is easy and
joyful; and sitting at supper, you can coldly and sensibly discuss why
we suffer and perish, and why we are not as sound and as satisfied as
you."

What they were singing had occurred to his mind before, but the thought
was somewhere in the background behind his other thoughts, and flickered
timidly like a faraway light in foggy weather. And he felt that this
suicide and the peasant's sufferings lay upon his conscience, too; to
resign himself to the fact that these people, submissive to their fate,
should take up the burden of what was hardest and gloomiest in life--how
awful it was! To accept this, and to desire for himself a life full
of light and movement among happy and contented people, and to be
continually dreaming of such, means dreaming of fresh suicides of men
crushed by toil and anxiety, or of men weak and outcast whom people only
talk of sometimes at supper with annoyance or mockery, without going to
their help.... And again:

"We go on, and on, and on..." as though someone were beating with a
hammer on his temples.

He woke early in the morning with a headache, roused by a noise; in the
next room Von Taunitz was saying loudly to the doctor:

"It's impossible for you to go now. Look what's going on outside.
Don't argue, you had better ask the coachman; he won't take you in such
weather for a million."

"But it's only two miles," said the doctor in an imploring voice.

"Well, if it were only half a mile. If you can't, then you can't.
Directly you drive out of the gates it is perfect hell, you would be off
the road in a minute. Nothing will induce me to let you go, you can say
what you like."

"It's bound to be quieter towards evening," said the peasant who was
heating the stove.

And in the next room the doctor began talking of the rigorous climate
and its influence on the character of the Russian, of the long
winters which, by preventing movement from place to place, hinder
the intellectual development of the people; and Lyzhin listened with
vexation to these observations and looked out of window at the snow
drifts which were piled on the fence. He gazed at the white dust which
covered the whole visible expanse, at the trees which bowed their heads
despa