“I don’t feel like eating.”
“Then I’ll eat it. May I?”
“You have a fine appetite, Seryozha.”
Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth full, began to sing in a dull voice, out of tune:
“Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us...”
After the arrest he at first grew sad; the work had not been done well, they had failed; but then he thought: “There is something else now that must be done well—and that is, to die,” and he cheered up again. And however strange it may seem, beginning with the second morning in the fortress, he commenced devoting himself to gymnastics according to the unusually rational system of a certain German named Müller, which absorbed his interest. He undressed himself completely and, to the alarm and astonishment of the guard who watched him, he carefully went through all the prescribed eighteen exercises. The fact that the guard watched him and was apparently astonished, pleased him as a propagandist of the Müller system; and although he knew that he would get no answer he nevertheless spoke to the eye staring in the little window:
“It’s a good system, my friend, it braces you up. It should be introduced in your regiment,” he shouted convincingly and kindly, so as not to frighten the soldier, not suspecting that the guard considered him a harmless lunatic.
The fear of death came over him gradually. It was as if somebody were striking his heart a powerful blow with the fist from below. This sensation was rather painful than terrible. Then the sensation was forgotten, but it returned again a few hours later, and each time it grew more intense and of longer duration, and thus it began to assume vague outlines of some great, even unbearable fear.
“Is it possible that I am afraid?” thought Sergey in astonishment. “What nonsense!”
It was not he who was afraid,—it was his young, sound, strong body, which could not be deceived either by the exercises prescribed by the Müller system, or by the cold rub-downs. On the contrary, the stronger and the fresher his body became after the cold water, the keener and the more unbearable became the sensations of his recurrent fear. And just at those moments when, during his freedom, he had felt a special influx of the joy and power of life,—in the mornings after he had slept soundly and gone through his physical exercises,—now there appeared this deadening fear which was so foreign to his nature. He noticed this and thought: