The samovar, which stood on a table against the partition-wall, was bubbling and boiling hard; the small mirror which hung above the table was enveloped in a thin layer of white steam. The windows and the chromo-lithograph which was nailed to the wall under the mirror--it depicted a giant in a yellow kaftan and red morocco boots, with a Russian banner in his hand, from beneath which peeped the towers and domes of the Moscow Kremlin--were also veiled in steam. Photographic portraits framed in shell-work surrounded this picture. In the place of honour hung the portrait of a priest in a moiré cassock, with a small, sparse beard, plump cheeks, and extremely small penetrating eyes. And, with a glance at him, Tikhon Ilitch crossed himself violently towards the holy pictures in the corner. Then he removed from the samovar a smoke-begrimed teapot and poured out a cup of tea, which smelled very much like a steamed bathroom. “They don’t give a man a chance to cross himself,” he said, wrinkling his face with the expression of a person suffering martyrdom. “They fairly cut my throat, curse them!” It seemed as if there were something which he ought to call to mind, to take under consideration, or as if he ought simply to go to bed and get a good sleep. He longed for warmth, repose, clearness, firmness of thought. He rose, went to the glass cupboard with its rattling panes and cups and saucers, and took from one of the shelves a bottle of liqueur flavoured with mountain-ash berries and a cask-shaped glass on which was inscribed: “Even monks take this.” “But perhaps I oughtn’t,” he said aloud. However, he lacked firmness. Through his mind, against his will, flashed the old saw: “Drink and you’ll die, and don’t drink and you’ll die just the same.” So he poured out a glassful and tossed it off, poured out another and gulped that down, also. And, munching at a thick cracknel, he sat down at the table. He became conscious of an agreeable burning sensation inside, and eagerly sipped the boiling tea from his saucer, sucking at a lump of sugar which he held in his teeth. He felt better, so far as his body was concerned. But his soul went on living its own life, which was both gloomy and melancholy. Thoughts followed thoughts, but there was no sense in them. As he sipped his tea, he cast an abstracted and suspicious glance sidelong at the partition-wall, at the man in the yellow kaftan, at the photographs in the shell-work frames, and even at the priest in his watered-silk cassock. “Lerigion means nothing to us pigs!” he said to himself; and, as though by way of justifying himself to some one, he added roughly: “Just you try living in the village, and drinking sparkling kvas, like us!” As he gazed askance at the priest he felt that everything was dubious; even his habitual reverence for that priest seemed doubtful, not founded on reason. When one really came to think about it....