Brama-Glinsky (that was his stage name, in his passport he was called Guskov) walked away to the window, put his hands in his pockets, and fell to gazing into the street. Before his eyes stretched an immense waste, bounded by a grey fence beside which ran a perfect forest of last year’s burdocks. Beyond the waste ground was a dark, deserted factory, with windows boarded up. A belated jackdaw was flying round the chimney. This dreary, lifeless scene was beginning to be veiled in the dusk of evening.

“I must go home!” the jeune premier heard.

“Where is home?”

“To Vyazma⁠ ⁠… to my home.⁠ ⁠…”

“It is a thousand miles to Vyazma⁠ ⁠… my boy,” sighed Brama-Glinsky, drumming on the windowpane. “And what do you want to go to Vyazma for?”

“I want to die there.”

“What next! Now he’s dying! He has fallen ill for the first time in his life, and already he fancies that his last hour is come.⁠ ⁠… No, my boy, no cholera will carry off a buffalo like you. You’ll live to be a hundred.⁠ ⁠… Where’s the pain?”

“There’s no pain, but I⁠ ⁠… feel⁠ ⁠…”

“You don’t feel anything, it all comes from being too healthy. Your surplus energy upsets you. You ought to get jolly tight⁠—drink, you know, till your whole inside is topsy-turvy. Getting drunk is wonderfully restoring.⁠ ⁠… Do you remember how screwed you were at Rostov on the Don? Good Lord, the very thought of it is alarming! Sashka and I together could only just carry in the barrel, and you emptied it alone, and even sent for rum afterwards.⁠ ⁠… You got so drunk you were catching devils in a sack and pulled a lamppost up by the roots. Do you remember? Then you went off to beat the Greeks.⁠ ⁠…”

Under the influence of these agreeable reminiscences Shtchiptsov’s face brightened a little and his eyes began to shine.