“No, they are not human, they who can do what they are doing—­ No—­ There, now, I heard that some kind of bombs and balloons have been invented.  Well, one ought to go up in such a balloon and sprinkle bombs down on them as if they were bugs, until they are all exterminated—­ Yes.  Because—­” he was going to continue, but, flushing all over, he began coughing worse than before, and a stream of blood rushed from his mouth.

Nabatoff ran to get ice.  Mary Pavlovna brought valerian drops and offered them to him, but he, breathing quickly and heavily, pushed her away with his thin, white hand, and kept his eyes closed.  When the ice and cold water had eased Kryltzoff a little, and he had been put to bed, Nekhludoff, having said good-night to everybody, went out with the sergeant, who had been waiting for him some time.

The criminals were now quiet, and most of them were asleep.  Though the people were lying on and under the bed shelves and in the space between, they could not all be placed inside the rooms, and some of them lay in the passage with their sacks under their heads and covered with their cloaks.  The moans and sleepy voices came through the open doors and sounded through the passage.  Everywhere lay compact heaps of human beings covered with prison cloaks.  Only a few men who were sitting in the bachelors’ room by the light of a candle end, which they put out when they noticed the sergeant, were awake, and an old man who sat naked under the lamp in the passage picking the vermin off his shirt.  The foul air in the political prisoners’ rooms seemed pure compared to the stinking closeness here.  The smoking lamp shone dimly as through a mist, and it was difficult to breathe.  Stepping along the passage, one had to look carefully for an empty space, and having put down one foot had to find place for the other.  Three persons, who had evidently found no room even in the passage, lay in the anteroom, close to the stinking and leaking tub.  One of these was an old idiot, whom Nekhludoff had often seen marching with the gang; another was a boy about twelve; he lay between the two other convicts, with his head on the leg of one of them.

When he had passed out of the gate Nekhludoff took a deep breath and long continued to breathe in deep draughts of frosty air.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHY IS IT DONE?

It had cleared up and was starlight.  Except in a few places the mud was frozen hard when Nekhludoff returned to his inn and knocked at one of its dark windows.  The broad-shouldered labourer came barefooted to open the door for him and let him in.  Through a door on the right, leading to the back premises, came the loud snoring of the carters, who slept there, and the sound of many horses chewing oats came from the yard.  The front room, where a red lamp was burning in front of the icons, smelt of wormwood and perspiration, and some one with mighty lungs was snoring behind a partition.  Nekhludoff undressed, put his leather travelling pillow on the oilcloth sofa, spread out his rug and lay down, thinking over all he had seen and heard that day; the boy sleeping on the liquid that oozed from the stinking tub, with his head on the convict’s leg, seemed more dreadful than all else.