When it was daylight and carriages were already beginning to rumble in the street,
Vassilyev was lying motionless on the sofa, staring into space. He was no longer thinking
of the women, nor of the men, nor of missionary work. His whole attention was turned
upon the spiritual agony which was torturing him. It was a dull, vague, undefined anguish
akin to misery, to an extreme form of terror and to despair. He could point to the place
where the pain was, in his breast under his heart; but he could not compare it with anything.
In the past he had had acute toothache, he had had pleurisy and neuralgia, but all that was
insignificant compared with this spiritual anguish. In the presence of that pain life seemed
loathsome. The dissertation, the excellent work he had written already, the people he loved,
the salvation of fallen women -- everything that only the day before he had cared about or
been indifferent to, now when he thought of them irritated him in the same way as the noise
of the carriages, the scurrying footsteps of the waiters in the passage, the daylight. . . . If at
that moment someone had performed a great deed of mercy or had committed a revolting
outrage, he would have felt the same repulsion for both actions. Of all the thoughts that
strayed through his mind only two did not irritate him: one was that at every moment he had
the power to kill himself, the other that this agony would not last more than three days. This
last he knew by experience.
After lying for a while he got up and, wringing his hands, walked about the room, not as
usual from corner to corner, but round the room beside the walls. As he passed he glanced
at himself in the looking-glass. His face looked pale and sunken, his temples looked hollow,
his eyes were bigger, darker, more staring, as though they belonged to someone else, and
they had an expression of insufferable mental agony.
At midday the artist knocked at the door.
"Grigory, are you at home?" he asked.
Getting no answer, he stood for a minute, pondered, and answered himself in Little
Russian: "Nay. The confounded fellow has gone to the University."
And he went away. Vassilyev lay down on the bed and, thrusting his head under the pillow,
began crying with agony, and the more freely his tears flowed the more terrible his mental
anguish became. As it began to get dark, he thought of the agonizing night awaiting him,
and was overcome by a horrible despair. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, and,
leaving his door wide open, for no object or reason, went out into the street. Without asking
himself where he should go, he walked quickly along Sadovoy Street.
Snow was falling as heavily as the day before; it was thawing. Thrusting his hands into his
sleeves, shuddering and frightened at the noises, at the trambells, and at the passers-by,
Vassilyev walked along Sadovoy Street as far as Suharev Tower; then to the Red Gate;
from there he turned off to Basmannya Street. He went into a tavern and drank off a big
glass of vodka, but that did not make him feel better. When he reached Razgulya he turned
to the right, and strode along side streets in which he had never been before in his life. He
reached the old bridge by which the Yauza runs gurgling, and from which one can see long
rows of lights in the windows of the Red Barracks. To distract his spiritual anguish by some
new sensation or some other pain, Vassilyev, not knowing what to do, crying and
shuddering, undid his greatcoat and jacket and exposed his bare chest to the wet snow and
the wind. But that did not lessen his suffering either. Then he bent down over the rail of the