used to insist on her taking milk and drops in his presence. It was
the same on this occasion. He sounded her and made her drink a glass
of milk, and there was a smell of creosote in our room afterwards.

"That's a good girl," he said, taking the glass from her. "You
mustn't talk too much now; you've taken to chattering like a magpie
of late. Please hold your tongue."

She laughed. Then he came into Radish's room where I was sitting
and affectionately slapped me on the shoulder.

"Well, how goes it, old man?" he said, bending down to the invalid.

"Your honour," said Radish, moving his lips slowly, "your honour,
I venture to submit. . . . We all walk in the fear of God, we all
have to die. . . . Permit me to tell you the truth. . . . Your
honour, the Kingdom of Heaven will not be for you!"

"There's no help for it," the doctor said jestingly; "there must
be somebody in hell, you know."

And all at once something happened with my consciousness; as though
I were in a dream, as though I were standing on a winter night in
the slaughterhouse yard, and Prokofy beside me, smelling of pepper
cordial; I made an effort to control myself, and rubbed my eyes,
and at once it seemed to me that I was going along the road to the
interview with the Governor. Nothing of the sort had happened to
me before, or has happened to me since, and these strange memories
that were like dreams, I ascribed to overexhaustion of my nerves.
I lived through the scene at the slaughterhouse, and the interview