vodka in the cupboard in the right-hand
corner," he thought. "If I drink one wine-glassful, she won't notice
it."

After some hesitation, overcoming his fears, Strizhin went to the
cupboard. Cautiously opening the door he felt in the right-hand
corner for a bottle and poured out a wine-glassful, put the bottle
back in its place, then, making the sign of the cross, drank it
off. And immediately something like a miracle took place. Strizhin
was flung back from the cupboard to the chest with fearful force
like a bomb. There were flashes before his eyes, he felt as though
he could not breathe, and all over his body he had a sensation as
though he had fallen into a marsh full of leeches. It seemed to him
as though, instead of vodka, he had swallowed dynamite, which blew
up his body, the house, and the whole street. . . . His head, his
arms, his legs--all seemed to be torn off and to be flying away
somewhere to the devil, into space.

For some three minutes he lay on the chest, not moving and scarcely
breathing, then he got up and asked himself:

"Where am I?"

The first thing of which he was clearly conscious on coming to
himself was the pronounced smell of paraffin.

"Holy saints," he thought in horror, "it's paraffin I have drunk
instead of vodka."

The thought that he had poisoned himself threw him into a cold
shiver, then into a fever. That it was really poison that he had
taken was proved not only by the smell in the room but also by the
burning taste in his mouth, the flashes before his eyes, the ringing
in his head, and the colicky pain in his stomach. Feeling the
approach of death and not buoying himself up with false hopes, he
wanted to say good-bye to those nearest to him, and made his way
to Dashenka's bedroom (being a widower he had his sister-in-law
called Dashenka, an old maid, living in the flat to keep house for
him).

"Dashenka," he said in a tearful voice as he went into the bedroom,
"dear Dashenka!"

Something grumbled in the darkness and uttered a deep sigh.

"Dashenka."

"Eh? What?" A woman's voice articulated rapidly. "Is that you, Pyotr
Petrovitch? Are you back already? Well, what is it? What has the
baby been christened? Who was godmother?"

"The godmother was Natalya Andreyevna Velikosvyetsky, and the
godfather Pavel Ivanitch Bezsonnitsin. . . . I . . . I believe,
Dashenka, I am dying. And the baby has been christened Olimpiada,
in honour of their kind patroness. . . . I . . . I have