CHAPTER IX
DREADFUL SOLITUDE


Under the same ringing of the clock, separated from Sergey and Musya
by only a few empty cells, but yet so painfully desolate and alone in
the whole world as though no other soul existed, poor Vasily Kashirin
was passing the last hours of his life in terror and in anguish.

Perspiring, his moist shirt clinging to his body, his once curly hair
disheveled, he tossed about in the cell convulsively and hopelessly,
like a man suffering from an unbearable physical torture. He would sit
down for awhile, then start to run again, he would press his forehead
against the wall, stop and seek something with his eyes-as if looking
for some medicine. His expression changed as though he had two
different faces. The former, the young face, had disappeared
somewhere, and a new one, a terrible face that had seemed to have come
out of the darkness, had taken its place.

The fear of death had come upon him all at once and taken possession
of him completely and forcibly. In the morning, while facing almost
certain death, he had been care-free and had scorned it, but toward
evening when he was placed in a cell in solitary confinement, he was
whirled and carried away by a wave of mad fear. So long as he went of
his own free will to face danger and death, so long as he had death,
even though it seemed terrible, in his own hands, he felt at ease. He
was even cheerful; in the sensation of boundless freedom, of brave and