expressed their discontent, but sparingly. Many in their exasperation jeered at themselves aloud, as though to punish themselves for having got up the protest.
“Put it in your pipe and smoke it,” some one would say.
“We had our joke and now we must pay for it!” another would add.
“What mouse can bell the cat?” observed a third.
“There’s no teaching us without the stick, we all know. It’s a good thing he didn’t flog us all.”
“For the future think more and talk less and you’ll do better!” some one would observe malignantly.
“Why, are you setting up to teach?”
“To be sure I am.”
“And who are you to put yourself forward?”
“Why, I am a man so far, and who are you?”
“You are a dog’s bone, that’s what you are.”
“That’s what you are.”
“There, there, shut up! What’s the shindy about!” the others shouted at the disputants from all sides.
The same evening, that is on the day of the complaint, on my return from work, I met Petrov behind the barracks. He was looking for me. Coming up to me he muttered something, two or three vague exclamations, but soon relapsed into absentminded silence and walked mechanically beside me. All this affair was still painfully weighing on my heart, and I fancied that Petrov could explain something to me.
“Tell me, Petrov,” said I, “are they angry with us?”
“Who angry?” he asked, as though waking up.
“The convicts angry with us—the gentlemen.”
“Why should they be angry with you?"
“Because we did not take part in the complaint.”
“But why should you make a complaint?” he asked, as though trying to understand me. “You buy your own food.”
“Good heavens! But some of you who joined in it buy your own food too. We ought to have done the same—as comrades.”
“But . . . but how can you be our comrades?” he asked in perplexity.
I looked at him quickly; he did not understand me in the least, he did not know what I was driving at. But I understood him thoroughly at that instant. A thought that had been stirring vaguely within me and haunting me for a long time had at last become clear to me, and I suddenly understood what I had
