"How eager you are! Come in again!"

Finally one day the warden shouted through the casement window as he
passed rapidly:

"You've let your chance slip by, you fool! We've found somebody else."

"The devil take you! Hang yourself!" snarled Tsiganok, and he stopped
dreaming of the execution.

But toward the end, the nearer he approached the time, the weight of
the fragments of his broken images became unbearable. Tsiganok now
felt like standing still, like spreading his legs and standing-but a
whirling current of thoughts carried him away and there was nothing at
which he could clutch-everything about him swam. And his sleep also
became uneasy. Dreams even more violent than his thoughts appeared
-new dreams, solid, heavy, like wooden painted blocks. And it was no
longer like a current, but like an endless fall to an endless depth, a
whirling flight through the whole visible world of colors.

When Tsiganok was free he had worn only a pair of dashing mustaches,
but in the prison a short, black, bristly beard grew on his face and
it made him look fearsome, insane. At times Tsiganok really lost his
senses and whirled absurdly about in the cell, still tapping upon the
rough, plastered walls nervously. And he drank water like a horse.

At times toward evening when they lit the lamp, Tsiganok would stand
on all fours in the middle of his cell and would howl the quivering
howl of a wolf. He was peculiarly serious while doing it, and would