not lived and that he lacks personality. There is nothing in store
for him except the useless existence of prison life. The egotistical
and debonair inspector, in his simplicity, does not understand the
anguish of the homeless prisoner, and, by his amicable chatter,
subjects him to horrible moral torture. It is too much for Panov.
When the inspector leaves, Panov, gripping the edge of his hard cot
in his convulsive hands, falls to the ground. He breathes heavily,
his lips move, but he does not speak. "That night Panov got drunk."

Two very different types appear in the novel called, "The Postillion
of the Emperor." We have here the idealist Misheka and the sectarian
Ostrovsky, a transported prisoner who is embittered by his hard lot,
and by life in general.

If Misheka protests against the complicated conditions of life to
which he cannot entirely submit, it is rather by instinct than
through reason. He is attracted by something invisible, something
distant and strange, to the repugnant world which surrounds him. As
a postillion of the State he has frequent communications with the
distant world which glows vaguely on his mental horizon. Everything
displeases him: both the savage country in which he has to live, and
the world of stupid, degenerate, and miserable postillions whom he
mercilessly criticizes. His random attempts to get away fail.
Despairing, he becomes an accomplice in a crime so that he can leave
this solitary place and go where his restless soul leads him.

At the side of Misheka we have the tragic figure of Ostrovsky, who
is the exasperated victim of the evil all around him.

The author and the travelers, driven by Misheka, have seen the
burning of Ostrovsky's house, which the latter burned himself so
that no one could profit by it. This action strikes Misheka as
wonderful.

"He begins to tell the story of the fire. Several years before,
Ostrovsky had been deported for having given up the orthodox faith.
His young wife and child followed him. They had been given a plot of
land in a broad and deep valley, between two walls of rock. The
place seemed fertile. It was not hard to sell wheat to the miners
and Ostrovsky worked diligently and steadily. But the inhabitants
had kept something from him: although the wheat grew in the valley,
it never ripened, because each year, without fail, in the month of
July it was destroyed by the cold winds from the northeast."

The first few years Ostrovsky attribute