used to be.  All the women with whom she came in contact tried to make money by her; the men, beginning with the commissary and down to the prison officers, all looked upon her as a means of pleasure.  The whole world was after pleasure.  Her belief in this was strengthened by the old author whom she met during the second year of her independent life.  He had told her frankly that this—­he called it poetical and esthetic—­is all of life’s happiness.

Every one lived for himself only, for his own pleasure, and all the words about God and goodness were deception.  And if the questions sometimes occurred to her, Why were the affairs of the world so ill arranged that people harm each other, and all suffer, she thought it best not to dwell on it.  If she became lonesome, she took a drink, smoked a cigarette, and the feeling would pass away.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

When at five o’clock the following morning, which was Sunday, the customary whistle blew, Korableva, who was already awake, roused Maslova.

“A convict,” Maslova thought with horror, rubbing her eyes and involuntarily inhaling the foul morning air.  She wished to fall asleep again, to transfer herself into a state of unconsciousness, but fear overcame her drowsiness.  She raised herself, crossed her legs under her, and looked around.  The women were already up, only the children were still sleeping.  The moonshining woman with bulging eyes was carefully removing her coat from under them.  The rioter was drying near the oven some rags which served for swaddling cloths, while the child, in the hands of the blue-eyed Theodosia, was crying at the top of its lungs, the woman lulling it in a gentle voice.  The consumptive, seizing her breast, coughed violently, and, sighing at intervals, almost screamed.  The red-headed woman lay prone on her back relating a dream she had had.  The old incendiary stood before the image, whispering the same words, crossing herself and bowing.  The chanter’s daughter sat motionless on her cot, and with dull, half-open eyes was looking into space.  Miss Dandy was curling on her finger her oily, rough, black hair.

Presently resounding steps were heard in the corridor, the lock creaked open, and two prisoners in short jackets and gray trousers scarcely reaching their ankles entered, and, raising the ill-smelling vat on a yoke, carried it away.  The women went to the faucets in the corridor to wash themselves.  The red-headed woman got into a quarrel with a woman from the adjoining cell.  Again there were cursing, shouting and complaints.

“You will get into the dark-room yet,” shouted the warden, and he slapped the red-headed woman on her fat, bare back, so that it resounded through the entire corridor.  “Don’t let me hear you again.”

“Fooling again, you old man?” she said, treating it as a caress.

“Hurry up!  It is time for mass.”