Again it was a gloomy day. The wind came in violent blasts, and whirled clouds of dust before it. The evening was coming on, and everything was permeated with the dead melancholy light of bleak skies. A depressing silence filled the streets, and it seemed as if all these pitiful houses had sprung up to no purpose, as if these hopelessly decayed structures timidly hinted at the poor tedious life that lurked within their walls. A few people walked in the streets--and they walked slowly, as if they barely conquered the drowsiness that inclined them to repose. Only children, eternal, unwearying vessels of divine joy, were lively, and ran about and played--but even they showed signs of inertia, and some sort of ugly, hidden monster, nestling behind their shoulders, looked out now and then with eyes full of menace upon their suddenly dulled faces. In the midst of the depression of these streets and houses, under estranged skies, upon the unclean and impotent earth, walked Peredonov, tormented by confused fears--there was no comfort for him in the heights and no consolation upon the earth, because now, as before, he looked upon the world with dead eyes, like some demon who, in his dismal loneliness, despaired with fear and with yearning. His feelings were dull, and his consciousness was a corrupting and deadening apparatus. All that reached his consciousness became transformed into abomination and filth. All objects revealed their imperfections to him and their imperfections gave him pleasure. When he walked past an erect and clean column, he had a desire to make it crooked and to bespatter it with filth. He laughed with joy when something was being besmirched in his presence. He detested very clean schoolboys, and persecuted them. He called them "the skin scrubbers." He comprehended the slovenly ones more easily. There were neither beloved objects for him, nor beloved people--and this made it possible for nature to act upon his feelings only one-sidedly, as an irritant. The same was true of his meetings with people. Especially with strangers and new acquaintances, to whom it was not possible to be impolite. Happiness for him was to do nothing, and, shutting himself in from the world, to gratify his belly. "And now I must go against my will," he thought, "and explain matters." What a burden! What a bore! If he had an opportunity at least of besmirching the place he was about to visit--but even this consolation was denied to him.