ide out, and calling God to witness that he will not let
him go into the street again, and that breach of the regulations
is worse to him than anything in the world.

Moiseika likes to make himself useful. He gives his companions
water, and covers them up when they are asleep; he promises each
of them to bring him back a kopeck, and to make him a new cap; he
feeds with a spoon his neighbour on the left, who is paralyzed. He
acts in this way, not from compassion nor from any considerations
of a humane kind, but through imitation, unconsciously dominated
by Gromov, his neighbour on the right hand.

Ivan Dmitritch Gromov, a man of thirty-three, who is a gentleman
by birth, and has been a court usher and provincial secretary,
suffers from the mania of persecution. He either lies curled up in
bed, or walks from corner to corner as though for exercise; he very
rarely sits down. He is always excited, agitated, and overwrought
by a sort of vague, undefined expectation. The faintest rustle in
the entry or shout in the yard is enough to make him raise his head
and begin listening: whether they are coming for him, whether they
are looking for him. And at such times his face expresses the utmost
uneasiness and repulsion.

I like his broad face with its high cheek-bones, always pale and
unhappy, and reflecting, as though in a mirror, a soul tormented
by conflict and long-continued terror. His grimaces are strange and
abnormal, but the delicate lines traced on his face by profound,
genuine suffering show intelligence and sense, and there is a warm
and healthy light in his eyes. I like the man himself, courteous,
anxious to be of use, and extraordinarily gentle to everyone except
Nikita. When anyone drops a button or a spoon, he jumps up from his
bed quickly and picks it up; every day he says good-morning to his
companions, and when he goes to bed he wishes them good-night.

Besides his continually overwrought condition and his grimaces, his
madness shows itself in the following way also. Sometimes in the
evenings he wraps himself in his dressing-gown, and, trembling all
over, with his teeth chattering, begins walking rapidly from corner
to corner and between the bedsteads. It seems as though he is in a
violent fever. From the way he suddenly stops and glances at his
companions, it can be seen that he is longing to say something very
important, but, apparently reflecting that they would not listen,
or would not understand him, he