with the anguish of a sick man, his swollen face, which seemed to him
to belong to some one else. Unceasingly he kept thinking of the cruel
fate which people were preparing for him. He recalled, one after
another, all the recent horrible instances of bombs that had been
thrown at men of even greater eminence than himself; he recalled how
the bombs had torn bodies to pieces, had spattered brains over dirty
brick walls, had knocked teeth from their roots. And influenced by
these meditations, it seemed to him that his own stout, sickly body,
outspread on the bed, was already experiencing the fiery shock of the
explosion. He seemed to be able to feel his arms being severed from
the shoulders, his teeth knocked out, his brains scattered into
particles, his feet growing numb, lying quietly, their toes upward,
like those of a dead man. He stirred with an effort, breathed loudly
and coughed in order not to seem to himself to resemble a corpse in
any way. He encouraged himself with the live noise of the grating
springs, of the rustling blanket; and to assure himself that he was
actually alive and not dead, he uttered in a bass voice, loudly and
abruptly, in the silence and solitude of the bedroom:

"Molodtsi! Molodtsi! Molodtsi! (Good boys)!"

He was praising the detectives, the police, and the soldiers-all those
who guarded his life, and who so opportunely and so cleverly had
averted the assassination. But even though he stirred, even though he
praised his protectors, even though he forced an unnatural smile, in
order to express his contempt for the foolish, unsuccessful
terrorists, he nevertheless did not believe in his safety, he was not
sure that his life would not leave him suddenly, at once. Death, which
people had devised for him, and which was only in their minds, in
their intention, seemed to him to be already standing there in the