a splendid peasant, and, except for his affliction, any girl would have
been glad to marry him. . . But now they had taken Gerasim to Moscow,
bought him boots, had him made a full-skirted coat for summer, a
sheepskin for winter, put into his hand a broom and a spade, and
appointed him porter.

At first he intensely disliked his new mode of life. From his childhood
he had been used to field labor, to village life. Shut off by his
affliction from the society of men, he had grown up, dumb and mighty, as
a tree grows on a fruitful soil. When he was transported to the town, he
could not understand what was being done with him; he was miserable and
stupefied, with the stupefaction of some strong young bull, taken
straight from the meadow, where the rich grass stood up to his belly,
taken and put in the truck of a railway train, and there, while smoke
and sparks and gusts of steam puff out upon the sturdy beast, he is
whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar and whistle, whither--God
knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to
him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half an hour all his work was
done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the
courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying
to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position; or he
would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off the
broom or the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for
hours together without stirring, like a caged beast. But man gets used
to anything, and Gerasim got used at last to living in town. He had
little work to do; his whole duty consisted in keeping the courtyard
clean, bringing in a barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging
in wood for the kitchen and the house, keeping out strangers, and
watching at night. And it must be said he did his duty zealously. In his
courtyard there was never a shaving lying about, never a speck of dust;