nds of outside work, chiefly painting roofs.
When I was new to the work it made my feet burn as though I were
walking on hot bricks, and when I put on felt boots they were hotter
than ever. But this was only at first; later on I got used to it,
and everything went swimmingly. I was living now among people to
whom labour was obligatory, inevitable, and who worked like
cart-horses, often with no idea of the moral significance of labour,
and, indeed, never using the word "labour" in conversation at all.
Beside them I, too, felt like a cart-horse, growing more and more
imbued with the feeling of the obligatory and inevitable character
of what I was doing, and this made my life easier, setting me free
from all doubt and uncertainty.

At first everything interested me, everything was new, as though I
had been born again. I could sleep on the ground and go about
barefoot, and that was extremely pleasant; I could stand in a crowd
of the common people and be no constraint to anyone, and when a cab
horse fell down in the street I ran to help it up without being
afraid of soiling my clothes. And the best of it all was, I was
living on my own account and no burden to anyone!

Painting roofs, especially with our own oil and colours, was regarded
as a particularly profitable job, and so this rough, dull work was
not disdained, even by such good workmen as Radish. In short breeches,
and wasted, purple-looking legs, he used to go about the roofs,
looking like a stork, and I used to hear him, as he plied his brush,
breathing heavily and saying: "Woe, woe to us sinners!"

He walked about the roofs as freely as though he were upon the
ground. In spite of his being ill and pale as a corpse, his agility
was extraordinary: he used to paint the domes and cupolas of the
churches without scaffolding, like a young man, with only the help
of a ladder and a rope, and it was rather horrible when standing
on a height far from the earth; he would draw himself up erect, and
for some unknown reason pronounce:

"Lice consume grass, rust consumes iron, and lying the soul!"

Or, thinking about something, would answer his thoughts aloud:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

When I went home from my work, all the people who were sitting on
benches by the gates, all the shopmen and boys and their employers,
made sneering and spiteful remarks after me, and this upset me at
first and seemed to be simply monstrous.

"Better-than-nothing!" I h