Gazin, in one of his drunken bouts, fell foul of Dostoyevski and nearly murdered him. He came into the kitchen one day, followed by his fiddler, and staggered up to a table where our author sat with a friend or two drinking. He smiled maliciously and asked with an insolent jeer how they could afford to buy tea. No answer was given, as any contradiction would have maddened him. Their continued silence had just the same effect. “You must have money,” he went on, “a great deal of money; but tell me, are you sent to hard labour to drink tea? Please tell me; I should like to know.” Still there was no reply. He trembled and grew livid with rage and looking round for some weapon of offence, seized the heavy bread box and rushed at Dostoyevski, raising it over his head. Death seemed imminent for one and all when a diversion was fortunately created by a voice crying, “Gazin! they have stolen your vodka.” The miscreant instantly dropped the box and ran off to recover his treasure. It was never known whether there had been any theft, or whether the words were invented as a stratagem to save the lives threatened. The vodka seller was in his glory at Christmas time, when there were great festivities and a drunken orgy was in progress with the tacit permission of the authorities. Gazin kept sober until toward the end of the celebration. He stood by the side of his camp bedstead, beneath which he had concealed his store of drink, after bringing it from his customary hiding place deep buried under the snow in the barrack yard. “He smiled knowingly when he saw his customers arrive in crowds. He drank nothing himself; he waited for that till the last day when he had emptied the pockets of his comrades,” who degenerated into the wildest excesses, singing, laughing and crying by turns, patrolling the barrack room in bands, and striking the strings of their _balalaiki_ or native guitars. To drink to excess was the chief way to find an outlet for rejoicing; it was also the means of deadening the hideous anticipation of acute and inevitable pain. A convict sentenced to be flogged invariably contrived to swallow the largest possible dose of spirits beforehand, often a long time ahead and at a fabulous price. A certain conviction prevailed that a drunken man suffered less from the plet or “the stick” than a sober one in the full possession of his faculties. In one case, an ex-soldier awaiting punishment infused a quantity of snuff into a bottle of vodka and drank it off at once. He was seized with violent convulsions, vomited blood, and was taken to hospital unconscious. His lungs had been hopelessly affected, phthisis declared itself and he soon died of consumption. CHAPTER V LIFE IN THE OSTROG