too.  I don’t understand life and I am afraid of it, my dear boy; I don’t know.  Perhaps I am a morbid person, unhinged.  It seems to a sound, healthy man that he understands everything he sees and hears, but that ‘seeming’ is lost to me, and from day to day I am poisoning myself with terror.  There is a disease, the fear of open spaces, but my disease is the fear of life.  When I lie on the grass and watch a little beetle which was born yesterday and understands nothing, it seems to me that its life consists of nothing else but fear, and in it I see myself.”

“What is it exactly you are frightened of?” I asked.

“I am afraid of everything.  I am not by nature a profound thinker, and I take little interest in such questions as the life beyond the grave, the destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried away to the heights.  What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from which none of us can escape.  I am incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me.  I recognize that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people, and to avoid noticing it; and I am frightened at the thought that to the day of my death I shall not escape from this falsity.  To-day I do something and to-morrow I do not understand why I did it.  I entered the service in Petersburg and took fright; I came here to work on the land, and here, too, I am frightened. . . .  I see that we know very little and so make mistakes every day.  We are unjust, we slander one another and spoil each other’s lives, we waste all our powers on trash which we do not need and which hinders us from living; and that frightens me, because I don’t understand why and for whom it is necessary.  I don’t understand men, my dear fellow, and I am afraid of them.  It frightens me to look at the peasants, and I don’t know for what higher objects they are suffering and what they are living for.  If life is an enjoyment, then they are unnecessary, superfluous people; if the object and meaning of life is to be found in poverty and unending, hopeless ignorance, I can’t understand for whom and what this torture is necessary.  I understand no one and nothing.  Kindly try to understand this specimen, for instance,” said Dmitri Petrovitch, pointing to Forty Martyrs.  “Think of him!”

Noticing that we were looking at him, Forty Martyrs coughed deferentially into his fist and said: 

“I was always a faithful servant with good masters, but the great trouble has been spirituous liquor.  If a poor fellow like me were shown consideration and given a place, I would kiss the ikon.  My word’s my bond.”

The sexton walked by, looked at us in amazement, and began pulling the rope.  The bell, abruptly breaking upon the stillness of the evening, struck ten with a slow and prolonged note.