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.