land in which there
were neither baths nor laundresses nor tailors. . . .

"I hear you are ill?" he said to Shtchiptsov, twirling round on his
heel. "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, really? . . ."

Shtchiptsov did not speak nor stir.

"Why don't you speak? Do you feel giddy? Oh well, don't talk, I
won't pester you . . . don't talk. . . ."

Brama-Glinsky (that was his stage name, in his passport he was
called Guskov) walked away to the window, put his hands in his
pockets, and fell to gazing into the street. Before his eyes stretched
an immense waste, bounded by a grey fence beside which ran a perfect
forest of last year's burdocks. Beyond the waste ground was a dark,
deserted factory, with windows boarded up. A belated jackdaw was
flying round the chimney. This dreary, lifeless scene was beginning
to be veiled in the dusk of evening.

"I must go home!" the _jeune premier_ heard.

"Where is home?"

"To Vyazma . . . to my home. . . ."

"It is a thousand miles to Vyazma . . . my boy," sighed Brama-Glinsky,
drumming on the window-pane. "And what do you want to go to Vyazma
for?"

"I want to die there."

"What next! Now he's dying! He has fallen ill for the first time
in his life, and already he fancies that his last hour is come. . . .
No, my boy, no cholera will carry off a buffalo like you. You'll
live to be a hundred. . . . Where's the pain?"

"There's no pain, but I . . . feel . . ."

"You don't feel anything, it all comes from being too healthy. Your
surplus energy upsets you. You ought to get jolly tight--drink,
you know, till your whole inside is topsy-turvy. Getting drunk is
wonderfully restoring. . . . Do you remember how screwed you were
at Rostov on the Don? Good Lord, the very thought of it is alarming!
Sashka and I together could only just carry in the barrel, and you
emptied it alone, and even sent for rum afterwards. . . . You got
so drunk you were catching devils in a sack and pulled a lamp-post
up by the roots. Do you remember? Then you went off to beat the
Greeks. . . ."

Under the influence of these agreeable reminiscences Shtchiptsov's
face brightened a little and his eyes began to shine.

"And do you remember how I beat Savoikin the manager?" he muttered,
raising his head. "But there! I've beaten thirty-three managers in
my time, and I can't remember how many smaller fry. And what managers
they were! Men who would not permit the very winds to touch them!
I've beaten two