'Let me go ... at once!'

'Why?'

'Let me go, or I shall do mischief, I shall set the house on fire or cut
some one's throat.' Misha suddenly began trembling. 'Tell them to give
me back my clothes, and let a cart take me to the highroad, and let me
have some money, however little!'

'Are you displeased, then, at anything?'

'I can't live like this!' he shrieked at the top of his voice. 'I can't
live in your respectable, thrice-accursed house! It makes me sick, and
ashamed to live so quietly! ... How _you_ manage to endure it!'

'That is,' I interrupted in my turn, 'you mean--you can't live without
drink....'

'Well, yes! yes!' he shrieked again: 'only let me go to my
brethren, my friends, to the beggars! ... Away from your
respectable, loathsome species!'

I was about to remind him of his sworn promises, but Misha's frenzied
look, his breaking voice, the convulsive tremor in his limbs,--it was
all so awful, that I made haste to get rid of him; I said that his
clothes should be given him at once, and a cart got ready; and taking
a note for twenty-five roubles out of a drawer, I laid it on the
table. Misha had begun to advance in a menacing way towards me,--but
on this, suddenly he stopped, his face worked, flushed, he struck
himself on the breast, the tears rushed from his eyes, and muttering,