trees (I believe I said so myself),
I got excited, I maintained Burdovsky's rights, 'my neighbour!'--I
dreamt that one and all would open their arms, and embrace me, that
there would be an indescribable exchange of forgiveness between us all!
In a word, I behaved like a fool, and then, at that very same instant, I
felt my 'last conviction.' I ask myself now how I could have waited six
months for that conviction! I knew that I had a disease that spares
no one, and I really had no illusions; but the more I realized my
condition, the more I clung to life; I wanted to live at any price. I
confess I might well have resented that blind, deaf fate, which, with no
apparent reason, seemed to have decided to crush me like a fly; but why
did I not stop at resentment? Why did I begin to live, knowing that it
was not worthwhile to begin? Why did I attempt to do what I knew to be
an impossibility? And yet I could not even read a book to the end; I
had given up reading. What is the good of reading, what is the good of
learning anything, for just six months? That thought has made me throw
aside a book more than once.

"Yes, that wall of Meyer's could tell a tale if it liked. There was no
spot on its dirty surface that I did not know by heart. Accursed wall!
and yet it is dearer to me than all the Pavlofsk trees!--That is--it
WOULD be dearer if it were not all the same to me, now!

"I remember now with what hungry interest I began to watch the lives of
other people--interest that I had never felt before! I used to wait for
Colia's arrival impatiently, for I was so ill myself, then, that I could
not leave the house. I so threw myself into every little detail of news,
and took so much interest in every report and rumour, that I believe I
became a regular gossip! I could not understand, among other things, how
all these people--with so much life in and before them--do not become
RICH--and I don't understand it now. I remember being told of a poor
wretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost beside myself
with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I would have done
so for the sole purpose of murdering him!

"Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but the streets
used to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself up for days
rather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so! I could
not bear to see all those preoccupied, anxious-looking creatures
continuously surging along the streets past