'Hallowed! how hallowed! In what way is it hallowed! What are you saying, Sir? It's unclean! It's damned!... Hallowed earth?... You must not talk like that, Sir, you ought to be ashamed! Is earth hallowed, which never thaws? This earth is cursed! God doesn't wish human beings to live here; it wouldn't have been like this, if He had wished it. Cursed! Bad! Damned! Damned!' And he began to spit about him, and stamp his feet, threatening the innocent Yakut earth with tightened lips and his shrivelled hands, and muttering Jewish maledictions. At last, exhausted by the effort, he fell rather than sat down at the table beside me. All exiles, without regard to religion or race, dislike Siberia: evidently a fanatic does not learn to hate it half-heartedly. I paused until he had calmed himself. Educated in a severe school, the Jew quickly regained his self-possession and mastered his emotion, and when I gazed questioningly into his eyes the next moment, he immediately answered me: 'You must pardon me; I do not speak of this to anyone, for to whom should I speak here?' 'Then are there very few Jews here?' 'Those here? Do you call them Jews, Sir? They're such low fellows, not one of them keeps the Law strictly.' Fearing another outburst, I would not, however, allow him to finish, and decided to change the conversation by asking him straight out what he wanted to talk to me about now. 'I should like to know the news from there, Sir. I have been here so many years, and I have never yet heard what is going on there.' 'You are asking a good deal, for I can't exactly tell you everything. I don't know what interests you,--politics perhaps?' The Jew was silent. I concluded that my present guest, like many of the others, was interested in politics; but as I myself did not understand the very elements of the subject, I began to give the stereotyped account I had already composed with a view to frequent repetition of the situation of European politics, our own,[13] and so forth. But the Jew fidgeted impatiently. 'Then this does not interest you?' I asked. 'I have never thought about it,' he answered candidly. 'Ah, now I know why you have come! I am sure you wish to know how the Jews are doing, and how trade is going?' 'They are better off than I am.' 'Exactly. I am sure, under the circumstances, you will wish to know if living is dear with us, what the market prices are, how much for butter, meat, etc.' 'What does it concern me if it is ever so cheap there, if I can get nothing here?' 'Quite right again; but what the devil did you actually come here for?' 'Since I don't know myself, I ask you, Sir, how I am to tell you? You see, Sir, I often get thinking ... I think so much ... that Ryfka (that's my wife) asks, "Srul, what's the matter with you?" And what can I tell her, for I don't know myself what it is. Perhaps some people would laugh at me?' he added, as if fearing I were amongst them.