their legs; and people said this diversion had been too much for
them, and had driven them mad.

A station was being built four miles from the town. It was said
that the engineers asked for a bribe of fifty thousand roubles for
bringing the line right up to the town, but the town council would
only consent to give forty thousand; they could not come to an
agreement over the difference, and now the townspeople regretted
it, as they had to make a road to the station and that, it was
reckoned, would cost more. The sleepers and rails had been laid
throughout the whole length of the line, and trains ran up and down
it, bringing building materials and labourers, and further progress
was only delayed on account of the bridges which Dolzhikov was
building, and some of the stations were not yet finished.

Dubetchnya, as our first station was called, was a little under
twelve miles from the town. I walked. The cornfields, bathed in the
morning sunshine, were bright green. It was a flat, cheerful country,
and in the distance there were the distinct outlines of the station,
of ancient barrows, and far-away homesteads. . . . How nice it was
out there in the open! And how I longed to be filled with the sense
of freedom, if only for that one morning, that I might not think
of what was being done in the town, not think of my needs, not feel
hungry! Nothing has so marred my existence as an acute feeling of
hunger, which made images of buckwheat porridge, rissoles, and baked
fish mingle strangely with my best thoughts. Here I was standing
alone in the open country, gazing upward at a lark which hovered
in the air at the same spot, trilling as though in hysterics, and
meanwhile I was thinking: "How nice it would be to eat a piece of
bread and butter!"