lled past the stupid two-storied stone houses, with imposing frontals,
inhabited by merchants, past the church, ornamented with pillars,
past the shops.... It was Saturday night and the streets were already
deserted--only the taverns were still filled with people. Hoarse drunken
voices issued from them, singing, accompanied by the hideous sounds of
a concertina. Every now and again a door opened suddenly, letting forth
the red reflection of a rush-light and a filthy, overpowering smell of
alcohol. Almost before every tavern door stood little peasant carts,
harnessed with shaggy, big-bellied, miserable-looking hacks, whose heads
were bowed submissively as if asleep; a tattered, unbelted peasant in a
big winter cap, hanging like a sack at the back of his head, came out
of a tavern door, and leaning his breast against the shafts, stood there
helplessly fumbling at something with his hands; or a meagre-looking
factory worker, his cap awry, his shirt unfastened, barefooted, his
boots having been left inside, would take a few uncertain steps, stop
still, scratch his back, groan suddenly, and turn in again...

"Drink will be the ruin of the Russian!" Markelov remarked gloomily.

"It's from grief, Sergai Mihailovitch," the coachman said without
turning round. He ceased whistling on passing each tavern and seemed to
sink into his own thoughts.

"Go on! Go on!" Markelov shouted angrily, vigorously tugging at his own
coat collar. They drove through the wide market square reeking with the
smell of rush mats and cabbages, past the governor's house with coloured
sentry boxes standing at the gate, past a private house with turrets,
past the boulevard newly planted with trees that were already dying,
past the hotel court-yard, filled with the barking of dogs and the
clanging of chains, and so on through the town gates, where they
overtook a long, long line of waggons, whose drivers had taken advantage
of the evening coolness, then out into the open country, where they
rolled along more swiftly and evenly over the broad road, planted on
either side with willows.

We must now say a few words about Markelov. He was six years older than
his sister, Madame Sipiagina, and had been educated at an artillery
school, which he left as an ensign, but sent in his resignation when he
had reached the rank of lieutenant, owing to a certain unpleasantness
that passed between him and his commanding officer, a German. Ever
since then he always deteste