me crawling painfully. His consciousness was dying out like
an extinguishing bonfire, growing icy like the corpse of a man who
had just died, whose heart is still warm but whose hands and feet had
already become stiffened with cold. His dying reason flared up as red
as blood again and said that he, Vasily Kashirin, might perhaps become
insane here, suffer pains for which there is no name, reach a degree of
anguish and suffering that had never been experienced by a single living
being; that he might beat his head against the wall, pick his eyes out
with his fingers, speak and shout whatever he pleased, that he might
plead with tears that he could endure it no longer,--and nothing would
happen. Nothing could happen.

And nothing happened. His feet, which had a consciousness and life of
their own, continued to walk and to carry his trembling, moist body.
His hands, which had a consciousness of their own, endeavored in vain to
fasten the coat which was open at his chest and to warm his trembling,
moist body.

His body quivered with cold. His eyes stared. And this was calm itself
embodied.

But there was one more moment of wild terror. That was when people
entered his cell. He did not even imagine that this visit meant that
it was time to go to the execution; he simply saw the people and was
frightened like a child.

"I will not do it! I will not do it!" he whispered inaudibly with his
livid lips and silently retreated to the depth of the cell, even as in
childhood he shrank when his father lifted his hand.

"We must start."

The people were speaking, walking around him, handing him something. He
closed his eyes, he shook a little,--and began to dress himself slowly.
His consciousness must have returned to him, for he suddenly asked the
official for a cigarette. And the official generously opened his silver
cigarette-case upon which was a chased figure in the style of the
decadents.

CHAPTER X. THE WALLS ARE FALLING

The unidentified man, who called himself Werner, was tired of life
and struggle. There was a time when he loved life very dearly, when he
enjoyed the theater, literature and social intercourse. Endowed with
an excellent memory and a firm will, he had mastered several European
languages and could easily pass for a German, a Frenchman or an
Englishman. He usually spoke German with a Bavarian accent, but when he
felt like it, he could speak like a born Berliner. He was fond of dress,
his manners we