“What else can we do?”
Sanine got up and changed his seat. He knew these peasants only too well, who lived like beasts, unable either to cope with their oppression or to destroy their oppressors. Vaguely hoping that some miracle might occur, in waiting for which millions and millions of their fellow-slaves had perished, they continued to lead their brutish existence.
Night had come. All were asleep except a little tradesman sitting opposite to Sanine, who was bullying his wife. She said nothing, but looked about her with fear in her eyes.
“Wait a bit, you cow, I’ll soon show you!” he hissed.
Sanine had fallen asleep when a cry from the woman awoke him. The fellow quickly removed his hand, but not before Sanine could see that he had been maltreating his wife.
“What a brute you are!” exclaimed Sanine, angrily.
The man started backwards in alarm, as he blinked his small, wicked eyes, and grinned.
Sanine in disgust went out on to the platform at the rear of the train. As he passed through the corridor-carriages he saw crowds of passengers lying prostrate across each other. It was daybreak and their weary faces looked livid in the grey dawn-light which gave them a helpless, pained expression.
Standing on the platform Sanine drank in draughts of the cool morning air.
“What a vile thing man is!” he thought. To get away, if only for a short while, from all his fellow-men, from the train, with its foul air, and smoke, and din—it was for that he longed.