t at small tables on wooden stools.
Their number seems to be augmented by their shadows dancing on the
walls and ceiling.

It is one endless monotony of repulsive ugliness and desolation.
The men's faces resemble masks with the various features
disproportionately magnified or reduced: big noses, or no noses at
all; eyes staring savagely, almost starting from their sockets, or
eyes narrowed to scarcely visible slits and points; huge Adam's apples
and tiny chins. Their hair is tangled, frowzy, dirty, covering half
the face on some of them. Despite their differences, a horrible
sameness is stamped upon their faces: a greenish, ghastly tinge of
decay and an expression that appears grotesque in some, gloomy and
stupidly timid in others.

They are dressed in dull rags, with here a bony arm bared, there
a sharp knee, and there again a frightfully sunken chest. Some are
almost entirely naked. The women differ little from the men, except
that they are even uglier and more uncouth. All have trembling heads
and hands and walk with an uncertain step, as if on a slippery, or
hilly, or sliding surface. Their voices, too, are all alike, rough and
hoarse. They speak as uncertainly as they walk, as if their lips were
frozen and refused to obey.

In the centre, at a separate table, sits Man, his gray, unkempt head
leaning on his arms. In this position he remains throughout the
scene, except during the one moment when he speaks. He is dressed very
poorly.

In the corner stands Someone in Gray, with the candle burned nearly
to the end. The slender blue flame flickers, now bending, now striving
upward with its sharp little tongue. Its blue throws a ghastly glare
on His face and chin._

THE DRUNKARD'S CONVERSATION

--Oh my! Oh my!

--Look, everything is swaying so strangely. There's nothing to rest
your eyes on.

--Everything is shaking as in a fever--the people, the chair, the
ceiling.

--Everything is floating and rocking as on waves.

--Do you hear a noise? I hear a kind of noise, as if an iron wheel
were rumbling, or stones falling from a mountain, large stones coming
down like rain.

--It's the ringing in your ears.

--It's the tingling of your blood. I feel my blood. It flows heavy
through my veins, thick, thick, black, smelling of rum. And when it
gets to my heart, it all falls down, and it's terrible.

--It seems to me I see flashes of lightning.

--I see huge, red woodpiles and people burning on them. It's
disg