"Listen, people, to the voice of one who ascended to the loft.
"In the loft I live,
Early do I wake;
Asleep or awake
Cockroaches devour me."
"He is not downhearted!" exclaimed his audience.
Sometimes Pavl and I went to him, and he joked with difficulty.
"With what shall I regale you, my dear guests? A fresh little spider—would you like that?"
He died slowly, and he grew very weary of it. He said with unfeigned vexation:
"It seems that I can't die, somehow; it is really a calamity!"
His fearlessness in the face of death frightened Pavl very much. He awoke me in the night and whispered:
"Maximich, he seems to be dying. Suppose he dies in the night, when we are lying beneath him—Oh, Lord! I am frightened of dead people."
Or he would say: