Absolute silence reigned all round. I dragged my stool to the window and looked upon the little bit of sky that I could see; I tried to catch some sound from the Nevá, or from the town on the opposite side of the river; but I could not. This dead silence began to oppress me, and I tried to sing, slowly at first, and louder and louder afterwards.
‘Have I then to say farewell to love for ever’—I caught myself singing from my favourite opera of Glinka, ‘Ruslán and Ludmíla.’
‘Sir, do not sing, please,’ a bass voice resounded through the food-window in my door.
‘I will sing, and I shall.’
‘You may not.’
‘I will sing nevertheless.’
Then came the governor, who tried to persuade me that I must not sing, as it would have to be reported to the commander of the fortress, and so on.
‘But my throat will become blocked and my lungs become useless if I do not speak and cannot sing,’ I tried to argue.
‘You had better try to sing in a lower tone, more or less to yourself,’ said the old governor in a supplicatory manner.
But all this was useless. A few days later I had lost all desire to sing. I tried to do it on principle, but it was of no avail.