shivered violently and incessantly, but tried to smile disdainfully
at the peasants' remarks, thinking by this means to adopt the proper
tone with me, and he stared at me. I offered him some sbiten; he
also, on taking the glass, warmed his hands over it; but no sooner
had he begun to speak, than he was thrust aside by a big, black,
hook-nosed individual, in a chintz shirt and waistcoat, without a
hat. The hook-nosed man asked for some sbiten also. Then came a
tall old man, with a mass of beard, clad in a great-coat girded with
a rope, and in bast shoes, who was drunk. Then a small man with a
swollen face and tearful eyes, in a brown nankeen round-jacket, with
his bare knees protruding from the holes in his summer trousers, and
knocking together with cold. He shivered so that he could not hold
his glass, and spilled it over himself. The men began to reproach
him. He only smiled in a woe-begone way, and went on shivering.
Then came a crooked monster in rags, with pattens on his bare feet;
then some sort of an officer; then something in the ecclesiastical
line; then something strange and nose-less,--all hungry and cold,
beseeching and submissive, thronged round me, and pressed close to
the sbiten. They drank up all the sbiten. One asked for money, and
I gave it. Then another asked, then a third, and the whole crowd
besieged me. Confusion and a press resulted. The porter of the
adjoining house shouted to the crowd to clear the sidewalk in front
of his house, and the crowd submissively obeyed his orders. Some
managers stepped out of the throng, and took me under their
protection, and wanted to lead me forth out of the press; but the
crowd, which had at first been scattered over the sidewalk, now
became disorderly, and hustled me. All stared at me and begged; and
each face was more pitiful and suffering and humble than the last. I
distributed all that I had with me. I had not much money, something
like twenty rubles; and in company with the crowd, I entered the