loor is grey and full of splinters. There is a stench
of sour cabbage, of smouldering wicks, of bugs, and of ammonia, and
for the first minute this stench gives you the impression of having
walked into a menagerie.

There are bedsteads screwed to the floor. Men in blue hospital
dressing-gowns, and wearing nightcaps in the old style, are sitting
and lying on them. These are the lunatics.

There are five of them in all here. Only one is of the upper class,
the rest are all artisans. The one nearest the door--a tall, lean
workman with shining red whiskers and tear-stained eyes--sits
with his head propped on his hand, staring at the same point. Day
and night he grieves, shaking his head, sighing and smiling bitterly.
He takes a part in conversation and usually makes no answer to
questions; he eats and drinks mechanically when food is offered
him. From his agonizing, throbbing cough, his thinness, and the
flush on his cheeks, one may judge that he is in the first stage
of consumption. Next to him is a little, alert, very lively old
man, with a pointed beard and curly black hair like a negro's. By
day he walks up and down the ward from window to window, or sits
on his bed, cross-legged like a Turk, and, ceaselessly as a bullfinch
whistles, softly sings and titters. He shows his childish gaiety
and lively character at night also when he gets up to say his prayers
--that is, to beat himself on the chest with his fists, and to
scratch with his fingers at the door. This is the Jew Moiseika, an
imbecile, who went crazy twenty years ago when his hat factory was
burnt down.

And of all the inhabitants of Ward No. 6, he is the only one who
is allowed to go out of the lodge, and even out of the yard into
the street. He has enjoyed this privilege for years, probably because
he is an old inhabitant of the hospital--a quiet, harmless imbecile,
the buffoon of the town, where people are used to seeing him
surrounded by boys and dogs. In his wretched gown, in his absurd
night-cap, and in slippers, sometimes with bare legs and even without
trousers, he walks about the streets, stopping at the gates and
little shops, and begging for a copper. In one place they will give
him some kvass, in another some bread, in another a copper, so that
he generally goes back to the ward feeling rich and well fed.
Everything that he brings back Nikita takes from him for his own
benefit. The soldier does this roughly, angrily turning the Jew's
pockets ins