ill again and was now better, in another. Just at the moment when
I received this letter my sister went softly into the painter's
room, sat down beside him and began reading aloud. She read to him
every day, Ostrovsky or Gogol, and he listened, staring at one
point, not laughing, but shaking his head and muttering to himself
from time to time:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

If anything ugly or unseemly were depicted in the play he would say
as though vindictively, thrusting his finger into the book:

"There it is, lying! That's what it does, lying does."

The plays fascinated him, both from their subjects and their moral,
and from their skilful, complex construction, and he marvelled at
"him," never calling the author by his name. How neatly _he_ has
put it all together.

This time my sister read softly only one page, and could read no
more: her voice would not last out. Radish took her hand and, moving
his parched lips, said, hardly audibly, in a husky voice:

"The soul of a righteous man is white and smooth as chalk, but the
soul of a sinful man is like pumice stone. The soul of a righteous
man is like clear oil, but the soul of a sinful man is gas tar. We
must labour, we must sorrow, we must suffer sickness," he went on,
"and he who does not labour and sorrow will not gain the Kingdom
of Heaven. Woe, woe to them that are well fed, woe to the mighty,
woe to the rich, woe to the moneylenders! Not for them is the Kingdom