s illustrated.

"Oh! Nothing! When a person wants to get anywhere quickly he whips up
the horses, but of course it needs fire to make engines go ..."

"Well, let everything go to the Devil as quickly as possible. I'm sure
I should be pleased if the earth suddenly opened up or was burned or
destroyed somehow .. only I were left to the last in order to see the
others consumed ..."

"Ferocious creature!" smiled Abyedok.

"Well, what of that? I ... I was once a man .. now I am an outcast ...
that means I have no obligations. It means that I am free to spit on
everyone. The nature of my present life means the rejection of my past
... giving up all relations towards men who are well fed and well
dressed, and who look upon me with contempt because I am inferior to
them in the matter of feeding or dressing. I must develop something new
within myself, do you understand? Something that will make Judas
Petunikoff and his kind tremble and perspire before me!"

"Ah! You have a courageous tongue!" jeered Abyedok.

"Yes ... You miser!" And Kuvalda looked at him contemptuously. "What
do you understand? What do you know? Are you able to think? But I
have thought and I have read ... books of which you could not have
understood one word."

"Of course! One cannot eat soup out of one's hand ... But though you
have read and thought, and I have not done that or anything else, we
both seem to have got into pretty much the same condition, don't we?"

"Go to the Devil!" shouted Kuvalda. His conversations with Abyedok
always ended thus. When the teacher was absent his speeches, as a
rule, fell on the empty air, and received no attention, and he knew
this, but still he could not help speaking. And now, having quarrelled
with his companion, he felt rather deserted; but, still longing for
conversation, he turned to Simtsoff with the following question: "And
you, Aleksei Maksimovitch, where will you lay your grey head?"

The old man smiled good-humouredly, rubbed his hands, and replied, "I
do not know ... I will see. One does not require much, just a little
drink."

"Plain but honourable fare!" the Captain said. Simtsoff was silent,
only adding that he would find a place sooner than any of them, because
women loved him. This was true. The old man had, as a rule, two or
three prostitutes, who kept him on their very scant earnings. They
very often beat him, but he took this stoically. They somehow never
beat him too m