"And I do not want to die yet, for I have lived wretchedly in sickness and bitterness, with no joy in my life. I've worked ever since I was a little boy, and like Jakov, under the scourge of a father. He was a drunkard and a brute. Three times he damaged my skull, once he scalded my leg with boiling water. I had no mother, she died when I was born. I married; I was compelled to take a wife who did not love me; three days after the wedding she hanged herself. Yes. I had a brother-in-law who robbed me, and my own sister said to my face that I drove my wife to her death. And they all said it, although they knew I had not touched her, that she died a maid. Then I lived nine years, alone and solitary. It is terrible to live alone. I've always waited for happiness to come at last, and now I'm dying. That is my whole life." He closed his eyes, paused a moment, then asked: "Why was life given to me? Guess that riddle." Ilya listened, pale, with fear in his heart. A dark shadow lay on Jakov's face and tears glimmered in his eyes; both were silent. "Why was I born? I ask. The Lord has done me wrong. I do not pray that He will lengthen my life. I find no words to pray with. I lie here and think and think: Why has life been given to me?" His voice choked. He broke off all at once, like a muddy brook that flows along and suddenly vanishes under ground. "For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion," said the church servant after a while in the words of the Scripture; then again his eyebrows went up, his eyes opened and his beard moved. "Also in Ecclesiastes it says: 'In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity, consider. God also hath set the one over against the other to the end that man should find nothing after him.' Well?" Ilya could hear no more. He got up quietly, gave Jakov a hand, bowed low to the sick man, as though he were taking leave of the dead; and this he did involuntarily. This time he left the hospital with a new, strangely oppressive feeling. The talk with the church servant had left no clear impression on his brain, but the mournful spectacle the sick man presented was stamped deep on his memory.