in his ears, and it seemed to Ivan Dmitritch
that the force and violence of the whole world was massed together
behind his back and was chasing after him.

He was stopped and brought home, and his landlady sent for a doctor.
Doctor Andrey Yefimitch, of whom we shall have more to say hereafter,
prescribed cold compresses on his head and laurel drops, shook his
head, and went away, telling the landlady he should not come again,
as one should not interfere with people who are going out of their
minds. As he had not the means to live at home and be nursed, Ivan
Dmitritch was soon sent to the hospital, and was there put into the
ward for venereal patients. He could not sleep at night, was full
of whims and fancies, and disturbed the patients, and was soon
afterwards, by Andrey Yefimitch's orders, transferred to Ward No.
6.

Within a year Ivan Dmitritch was completely forgotten in the town,
and his books, heaped up by his landlady in a sledge in the shed,
were pulled to pieces by boys.

IV

Ivan Dmitritch's neighbour on the left hand is, as I have said
already, the Jew Moiseika; his neighbour on the right hand is a
peasant so rolling in fat that he is almost spherical, with a blankly
stupid face, utterly devoid of thought. This is a motionless,
gluttonous, unclean animal who has long ago lost all powers of
thought or feeling. An acrid, stifling stench always comes from
him.

Nikita, who has to clean up after him, beats him terribly with all
his might, not sparing his fists; and what is dreadful is not his
being beaten--that one can get used to--but the fact that this
stupefied creature does not respond to the blows with a sound or a
movement, nor by a look in the eyes, but only sways a little like
a heavy barrel.

The fifth and last inhabitant of Ward No. 6 is a man of the artisan
class who had once been a sorter in the post office, a thinnish,
fair little man with a good-natured but rather sly face. To judge
from the clear, cheerful look in his calm and intelligent eyes, he
has some pleasant idea in his mind, and has some very important and
agreeable secret. He has under his pillow and under his mattress
something that he never shows anyone, not from fear of its being
taken from him and stolen, but from modesty. Sometimes he goes to
the window, and turning his back to his companions, puts something
on his breast, and bending his head, looks at it; if you go up to
him at such a moment, he is overcome with confusion