"It is some misunderstanding ..." began Andréi Yéfimitch, frightened by the lunatic's words. He shrugged his shoulders and repeated. "It is a misunderstanding of some kind."
Iván Dmítritch again spat, and lay down on his bed.
"Accursed life!" he growled. "But what is most bitter, most abominable of all, is that this life ends not with rewards for suffering, not with apotheoses as in operas, but in death; men come and drag the corpse by its arms and legs into the cellar. Brrrrrr!... Well, never mind!... For all that we have suffered in this, in the other world we will be repaid with a holiday! From the other world I shall return hither as a shadow, and terrify these monsters!... I will turn their heads grey!"
Moséika entered the ward, and seeing the doctor, stretched out his hand, and said:
"Give me a kopeck!"
XVIII
Andréi Yéfimitch went across to the window, and looked out into the fields. It was getting dark, and on the horizon rose a cold, livid moon. Near the hospital railings, a hundred fathoms away, not more, rose a lofty, white building, surrounded by a stone wall. It was the prison.
"That is actuality," thought Andréi Yéfimitch, and he felt terrified.
Everything was terrible: the moon, the prison, the spikes in the fence, and the blaze in the distant bone-mill. Andréi Yéfimitch turned away from the window, and saw before him a man with glittering stars and orders upon his breast. The man smiled and winked cunningly. And this, too, seemed terrible.