Tears flowed from under the young man's closed eyes, and he clenched his hands convulsively. Words unknown to him, words known as longing and the desire for love, forced themselves unnoticed to his lips. In a vision he saw moist eyes and a girl's long braided hair rising and sinking in some sea cavern. An unknown force, inexpressibly sweet, a force which could be neither expelled nor conquered, rose within him, carrying him far away into space. His soul threw off its fetters, and rushed forth in its wild freedom, as a colt starts for a mad gallop.... SRUL--FROM LUBARTÓW ADAM SZYMAŃSKI I It happened in the year,...; but no matter what year. Suffice it to say that it happened, and that it happened at Yakutsk in the beginning of November, about a month after my arrival at that citadel of frosts. The thermometer was down to 35 degrees Réamur. I was therefore thinking anxiously of the coming fate of my nose and ears, which, fresh from the West, had been making silent but perceptible protests against their compulsory acclimatization, and to-day were to be submitted to yet further trials. These latest trials were due to the fact that one of the men in our colony, Peter Kurp, nicknamed Bałdyga,[10] had died in the local hospital two days before, and early that morning we were going to do him a last service, by laying his wasted body in the half-frozen ground. I was only waiting for an acquaintance, who was to tell me the hour of the funeral, and I had not long to wait. Having wrapped up my nose and ears with the utmost care, I set out with the others to the hospital. The hospital was outside the town. In the courtyard, and at some distance from the other buildings, stood a small shed--the mortuary. In this mortuary lay Bałdyga's body. When the doors were opened, we entered, and the scene within made a painful impression on the few of us present. We were about ten people, possibly a few more, and we all involuntarily looked at one another: we were standing opposite a cold and bare reality, not veiled by any vestige of pretence.... In the shed,--which possessed neither table nor stool, nothing but walls white with hoarfrost and a floor covered with snow,--lay a large bearded corpse, equally white, and tied up in some kind of sheet or shirt. This was Bałdyga. The body, which was completely frozen, had been brought near the light to the door, where the coffin was standing ready. Never shall I forget Bałdyga's face as I saw it then with the light full upon it, and washed by the snow. There was something strange and indescribably sad in the rough, strongly marked countenance; the large pupils and projecting eyeballs seemed to look far away into the distance towards the stern frosty sky.