During the Fast of St. Peter Tikhon Ilitch spent four days in the town at the Fair and got still more out of tune, thanks to his worries, the heat, and sleepless nights. Ordinarily he set out for the Fair with great gusto. At twilight the carts were greased and heaped with hay. Behind one, that in which the manager of his farm rode, were hitched the horses or cows destined for sale; in the other, in which the master himself was to ride, were placed cushions and a peasant overcoat. Making a late start, they journeyed squeaking all night long until daybreak. First of all they indulged in friendly discussion and smoking. The men told each other frightful old tales of merchants murdered on the road and at halting places for the night. Then Tikhon Ilitch disposed himself for sleep; and it was extremely pleasant to hear through his dreams the voices of those whom they met, to feel the vigorous swaying of the cart, as if it were constantly descending a hill, and his cheeks slipping deep into a pillow while his cap fell off and the night chill cooled his head. It was agreeable, too, to wake up before sunrise in the rosy, dewy morning, in the midst of the dull-green grain, and to see, far away in the blue lowlands, the town shining as a cheerful white spot, and the gleam of its churches; to yawn mightily, cross himself at the faint sound of the bells, and take the reins from the hands of the half-slumbering old man, who sat relaxed like a child in the morning chill and was as white as chalk in the light of the dawn. But on this occasion Tikhon Ilitch sent off the carts with his head man and drove himself in a runabout. The night was warm and bright; there was a rosy tone in the moonlight. He drove fast, but became extremely weary. The lights on the Fair buildings, the jail and the hospital, were visible from the steppe at a distance of ten versts as one approached the town, and it seemed as if one would never reach them--those distant, sleepy lights. And at the posting-house on the Ststchepnoy Square it was so hot, and the fleas bit so viciously, and voices rang out so frequently at the entrance-gate, and the carts rattled so as they drove into the stone-paved courtyard, and the cocks began to screech and the pigeons to start their rumbling coo so early, and the sky to grow white beyond the open windows, that he never closed an eye. He slept little the second night, too, which he tried to pass at the Fair in his cart. The horses neighed, lights blazed in the stalls, people walked and talked all around him; and at dawn, when his eyelids were fairly sticking together with sleep, the bells on the jail and the hospital began to ring. And right over his head the horrible bellow of a cow boomed out. “Might as well be a criminal condemned to hard labour in prison!” was a thought which recurred incessantly during those days and nights. “Struggling--getting all snarled up--and going to destruction over trifles, absurdities!”