With a yell of laughter the two scoundrels jumped up to seize Romashov; but the latter's self-command was exhausted. The whole hideous situation--this disgusting drinking-bout in the weird, dark room with its insufferable, stifling atmosphere--this mysterious midnight meeting between two individuals who were a danger to society--the vulgar bellowing of the drunken officers and their blasphemous parody of the Russian Mass--all this filled him with frantic terror and nausea. With a piercing shriek, he thrust Solotuchin from him, and, trembling in every limb, rushed deliberately from the mortuary. Common sense now urged him to go home, but a strange, unfathomable inward force again drove him, against his will, to the mess-room. There some of the wine-soaked company were asleep on the window-sills and chairs. A stifling heat prevailed, and, in spite of the wide-open windows, the drowsily burning lights and lamps were never reached by a quickening draught of air. The poor, dead-tired soldiers who attended to the waiting could scarcely stand on their legs, and every moment stifled a yawn, but as yet none of the champion boozers had entertained a thought of breaking up. Viätkin had again taken his place on a table, and was singing in his high, caressive tenor voice-- "Swift as the ocean's Roaring billows, Vanishes life in eternity." There were several officers in the regiment with really beautiful voices, which even now were very effective in spite of the drink. This simple, plaintive melody exercised, at this moment, an ennobling influence on all, and more than one of them experienced a pricking, remorseful feeling at the thought of his worthless, sinful life. "Once you're in your coffin, Soon the world forgets your name," continued Viätkin in a voice of emotion, and his sleepy but good eyes were dimmed with tears. Artschakovski seconded him with unimpeachable care. To make his voice thrill he grasped his larynx with two fingers and shook it. Osadchi accompanied it all with his heavy, long-drawn, organ notes. After the singing there reigned a deep silence for a few moments. Suddenly Osadchi began again to recite in a subdued tone and eyes cast down-- "All ye who wander in sorrow's heavy, narrow road----" "No, that's enough of it," a voice exclaimed. "This is now, I suppose, the tenth time we have taken up this cursed Mass of Requiem----" But the rest had already intoned the solemn melody that divides the recitative of the antiphon, and once more, in the reeking and dirty room, resounded the requiem over St. John of Damascus in clear, full-voiced strains that express in so masterly a way the inconsolable sorrow for death's inexorable cruelty-- "All ye who believe in Me enter into the joy of My Father." Artschakovski, who was as familiar with the ritual as the most experienced choir-singer, at once repeated the following answer in accordance with the text-- "With our whole soul we all praise," etc.