seams, stained about the cuffs a dull brown--doctors know the color.
Such stains have hanged a man before now, for they are the marks of
blood. Paul put on this coat. He took a long, soft silken scarf such as
Russians wear in winter, and wrapped it round his throat, quite
concealing the lower part of his face. He crammed a fur cap down over
his ears.

"Come," he said.

Karl Steinmetz accompanied them down stairs, carrying a lamp in one
hand. He closed the door behind them, but did not lock it. Then he went
upstairs again to the quiet little room, where he sat down in a deep
chair. He looked at the open door of the cupboard from which Paul Alexis
had taken his simple disguise, with a large, tolerant humor.

"El Señor Don Quixote de la Mancha," he said sleepily.

It is said that to a doctor nothing is shocking and nothing is
disgusting. But doctors are, after all, only men of stomach like the
rest of us, and it is to be presumed that what nauseates one will
nauseate the other. When the starosta unceremoniously threw open the
door of the miserable cabin belonging to Vasilli Tula, Paul gave a
little gasp. The foul air pouring out of the noisome den was such that
it seemed impossible that human lungs could assimilate it. This Vasilli
Tula was a notorious drunkard, a discontent, a braggart. The Nihilist
propaganda had in the early days of that mistaken mission reached him
and unsettled his discontented mind. Misfortune seemed to pursue him. In
higher grades of life than his there are men who, like Tula, make a
profession of misfortune.