have nothing.  Take away this disease from them, cure them, and they are rendered most unfortunate, because they thus lose their sole means of living, they then become empty.  Sometimes a man’s life is so poor that he is involuntarily compelled to prize his defect and live by it.  It may frankly be said that people are often depraved out of mere weariness.  The soldier felt insulted, and besetting our baker, roared: 

“Tell me—­who is it?”

“Shall I tell you?” the baker suddenly turned to him.

“Well?”

“Do you know Tanya?”

“Well?”

“Well, try.” . . .

“I?”

“You!”

“Her?  That’s easy enough!”

“We’ll see!”

“You’ll see!  Ha, ha!”

“She’ll. . . .”

“A month’s time!”

“What a boaster you are, soldier!”

“Two weeks!  I’ll show you!  Who is it?  Tanya!  Tfoo!” . . .

“Get away, I say.”

“Get away, . . . you’re bragging!”

“Two weeks, that’s all!”

Suddenly our baker became enraged, and he raised the shovel against the soldier.  The soldier stepped back, surprised, kept silent for awhile, and, saying ominously, in a low voice:  “Very well, then!” he left us.

During the dispute we were all silent, interested in the result.  But when the soldier went out, a loud, animated talk and noise was started among us.

Some one cried to the baker: 

“You contrived a bad thing, Pavel!”

“Work!” replied the baker, enraged.

We felt that the soldier was touched to the quick and that a danger was threatening Tanya.  We felt this, and at the same time we were seized with a burning, pleasant curiosity—­what will happen?  Will she resist the soldier?  And almost all of us cried out with confidence: 

“Tanya?  She will resist!  You cannot take her with bare hands!”

We were very desirous of testing the strength of our godling; we persistently proved to one another that our godling was a strong godling, and that Tanya would come out the victor in this combat.  Then, finally, it appeared to us that we did not provoke the soldier enough, that he might forget about the dispute, and that we ought to irritate his self-love the more.  Since that day we began to live a particular, intensely nervous life—­a life we had never lived before.  We argued with one another all day long, as if we had grown wiser.  We spoke more and better.  It seemed to us that we were playing a game with the devil, with Tanya as the stake on our side.  And when we had learned from the bulochniks that the soldier began to court “our Tanya,” we felt so dreadfully good and were so absorbed in our curiosity that we did not even notice that the proprietor, availing himself of our excitement, added to our work fourteen poods (a pood is a weight of forty Russian pounds) of dough a day.  We did not even get tired of working.  Tanya’s name did not leave our lips all day long.  And each morning we expected her with especial impatience.  Sometimes we imagined that she might come to us—­and that she would be no longer the same Tanya, but another one.