mathematics, and sometimes on Sundays literature. Studying history meant choosing a certain period and nation, and recalling all the facts and the chronology belonging to them. The study of mathematics meant working out and mentally solving problems. (He was particularly fond of this occupation.) On Sundays he recalled Poúshkin, Gógol, Shakespeare, or himself composed something.
Before going to bed, he again went for a short imaginary walk; carried on amusing, merry and sometimes serious conversations with comrades, both men and women—some that had really taken place and some that were newly invented. And so it went on till bedtime; and just before lying down he really walked two thousand steps backwards and forwards in his cage for exercise, and when in bed he generally slept.
It was the same the next day. Sometimes he travelled south, and went about inciting the people and arranging riots, and with the people, expelled the landlords and divided the land among the peasants. All this, however, he did not imagine all at once, but gradually, going into every detail. In his fancy the Revolutionary parties always triumphed; the power of the Government grew weaker, and it was obliged to call together a Council. The Imperial family and all the oppressors of the people disappeared, and a Republic was established, and he, Mezhenétsky, was chosen President. Sometimes he reached this climax too quickly, and then he began again from the beginning, and attained his end by other means.
So he lived one, two, three years: occasionally discontinuing this rigorous order of life for a time, but always returning to it again. Fits of insomnia and visions of horrible faces rarely troubled him now, and when they did, he looked at the ventilator and pictured to himself how he would fasten a rope to it, make a noose, and hang himself. He managed to master these fits, and they never lasted long.