And Bałdyga was continually in my mind, as if he were alive. I had sat for hours at my half-finished task. Somehow I could not stick to work; the pen fell from my hand, and my unruly thoughts ranged far away beyond the snowy frontier and frosty ground. In vain I appealed to my reason, in vain I repeated wholesome advice to myself for the tenth time. Hitherto I had offered some resistance to the sickness which had consumed me for several weeks; to-day I felt completely overcome and helpless. Homesickness was devouring and making pitiless havoc of me. I had been unable to resist dreaming so many times already; was it likely I should withstand the temptation to-day? The temptation was stronger, and I was weaker than usual. So begone frost and snow, begone the existence of Yakutsk! I threw down my pen, and surrounding myself with clouds of tobacco smoke, plunged into the waters of feverish imagination. And how it carried me away!... My thoughts fled rapidly to the far West, across morasses and steppes, mountains and rivers, across countless lands and cities, and spread a scene of true enchantment before me. There on the Vistula lay my native plains, free from misery and human passions, beautiful and harmonious. My lips cannot utter, nor my pen describe their charm! I saw the golden fields, the emerald meadows; the dense forests murmured their old legends to me. I heard the rustle of the waving corn; the chirping of the feathered poets; the sound of the giant oaks as they haughtily bid defiance to the gale. And the air seemed permeated by the scent of those aromatic forests, and those blossoming fields, adorned in virgin freshness by the blue cornflowers and that sweetest beauty of Spring,--the innocent violet. ... Every single nerve felt the caress of my native air.... I was touched by the life-giving power of the sun's rays; and although the frost outside creaked more fiercely, and showed its teeth at me on the window panes more menacingly, yet the blood circulated in my veins more rapidly, my head burnt, and I sat as if spellbound, deaf, no longer seeing or hearing anything round me.... II I did not notice that the door opened and someone entered my room, neither did I see the circles of vapour, which form in such numbers every time a door is opened that they obscure the face of the person entering. I did not feel the cold: it penetrates human dwellings here with a sort of shameless, premeditated violence. In fact, I had seen or heard nothing until suddenly I felt a man close to me, and even before catching sight of him, found myself involuntarily putting him the usual Yakut question: 'Toch nado?' ('What do you want?') 'If you please, Sir, I am a hawker,' was the answer.