I had struggled with this severe illness for some months already and by the time Christmas Eve came I was straining after everything that recalled home, with the unhappy perversity with which a drunkard's thoughts run on spirits, or the thoughts of a lunatic on his mania. A letter received some days beforehand enclosing the symbol of Christmas, the wafer broken into small pieces,[10] had poured oil on the fire. I had read that letter through countless times, and as I now ran to and fro in my room, like a squirrel shut up in its round cage, I was no longer thinking of the letter alone. I had drunk all the poison of memories which the past sleepless nights had called forth in feverish haste without a moment's respite, and my harassed and exhausted imagination could go no farther. The day which had awakened so many remembrances and brought me so much suffering had come. My only desire was to spend the evening in such a way as to drain the cup of treacherous sweetness to the dregs, and surround myself with an atmosphere which would revive the irrevocable past--if but for a moment and but remotely--and would suggest new and actual pictures to nourish my exhausted imagination; although these might be of the coarsest, they would give it food for new visions, fresh hallucinations. There were some hospitable Polish houses in X---- at the time, and Christmas was being celebrated in one or two of them. Yet I could not bring myself to go to any of them. It can easily be conjectured that on this day I wished to break away from the oppressive bonds of conventionality, and to spend Christmas Eve beyond the border-line of "society." * * * * * Imagine yourself walking in the evening, when there is a hard frost, through the empty streets of X----, and coming to the end of Cossack Street; you would then find yourself at a point whence the smaller part of the town stretches far away before you. The old mud-choked riverbed separates it just at that spot from the principal part. If the frost is very bitter, you will remain there with all the greater pleasure to enjoy the sight in front of you. A number of little lights, bright or pale, strong or flickering, are continually visible here, even through the mist of snow. In an uninhabited and desolate country the sight of any fair-sized colony is so attractive that I never once walked this way without feasting my eyes on so visible a proof of man's strength and vitality. I knew every house there: near at hand the brightly lighted houses of the richer tradesmen and officials; farther off the Cossacks' houses, like yurta; still farther the house of the shoemaker and church clerk, and Jan Piętrzak's forge; still farther, scarcely visible through the frozen panes, the feeble little lights from the Yakut yurta; and beyond them--the end of life, a boundless snowy space.