The great fatigue I underwent was a source of satisfaction, it gave me hope of sound sleep. During the summer sleep was torment, more intolerable than the closeness and infection winter brought with it. Some of the nights were certainly very beautiful. The sun, which had not ceased to inundate the court-yard all the day, hid itself at last. The air freshened, and the night, the night of the steppe, became comparatively cold. The convicts, until shut up in their barracks, walked about in groups, especially on the kitchen side; for that was the place where questions of general interest were by preference discussed, and comments were made upon the rumours from without, often absurd indeed, but always keenly exciting to these men cut off from the world. For example, we suddenly learn that our Major had been roughly dismissed from his post. Convicts are as credulous as children; they know the news to be false, or most unlikely, and that the fellow who brings it is a past master in the art of lying, Kvassoff; for all that they clutch at the nonsensical story, go into high delight over it, are much consoled, and at last quite ashamed to have been duped by a Kvassoff. “I should like to know who’ll show _him_ the door?” cries one convict; “don’t you fear, he’s a fellow who knows how to stick on.” “But,” says another, “he has his superiors over him.” This one is a warm controversialist, and has seen the world. “Wolves don’t feed on one another,” says a third gloomily, half to himself. _This_ one is an old fellow, growing gray, and he always takes his sour cabbage soup into a corner, and eats it there. “Do you think his superiors will take _your_ advice whether they shall show him the door or not?” adds a fourth, who doesn’t seem to care about it at all, giving a stroke to his balalaïka. “Well, why not?” replies the second angrily; “if you _are_ asked, answer what’s in your mind. But no, with us fellows it’s all mere cry, and when you ought to go at things with a will, everybody sneaks out.” “That’s _so_!” says the one playing with the balalaïka. “Hard labour and prison are just the things to cause _that_.” “It was like that the other day,” says the second one, without hearing the remark made to him. “There was a little wheat left, sweepings, a mere nothing; there was some idea of turning the refuse into money; well, look here, they took it to him, and he confiscated it. All economy, you see. Was that _so_, and was it right--yes or no?” “But whom can you complain to?” “To whom? Why, the ’spector (_Inspector_) who’s coming.” “What ’spector?”