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The first two days he was very talkative and cheerful. But even on the third day he seemed somehow subdued, though he remained, as before, with the ladies and tried to entertain them. A half mournful, half dreamy expression flitted now and then over his face, and the face itself was paler and looked thinner. ‘Are you unwell?’ I asked him.

‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘my head aches a little.’ On the fourth day he was completely silent; for the most part he sat in a corner, hanging his head disconsolately, and his dejected appearance worked upon the compassionate sympathies of the two ladies, who now, in their turn, tried to amuse him. At table he ate nothing, stared at his plate, and rolled up pellets of bread. On the fifth day the feeling of compassion in the ladies began to be replaced by other emotions–uneasiness and even alarm. Misha was so strange, he held aloof from people, and kept moving along close to the walls, as though trying to steal by unnoticed, and suddenly looking round as though some one had called him. And what had become of his rosy colour? It seemed covered over by a layer of earth. ‘Are you still unwell?’ I asked him.

‘No, I’m all right,’ he answered abruptly.

‘Are you dull?’

‘Why should I be dull?’ But he turned away and would not look me in the face.

‘Or is it that wretchedness come over you again?’ To this he made no reply. So passed another twenty-four hours.

Next day my aunt ran into my room in a state of great excitement, declaring that she would leave the house with her niece, if Misha was to remain in it.

‘Why so?’

‘Why, we are dreadfully scared with him…. He’s not a man, he’s a wolf,–nothing better than a wolf. He keeps moving and moving about, and doesn’t speak–and looks so wild…. He almost gnashes his teeth at me. My Katia, you know, is so nervous…. She was so struck with him the first day…. I’m in terror for her, and indeed for myself too.’ … I didn’t know what to say to my aunt. I couldn’t, anyway, turn Misha out, after inviting him.

He relieved me himself from my difficult position. The same day,–I was still sitting in my own room,–suddenly I heard behind me a husky and angry voice: ‘Nikolai Nikolaitch, Nikolai Nikolaitch!’ I looked round; Misha was standing in the doorway with a face that was fearful, black-looking and distorted. ‘Nikolai Nikolaitch!’ he repeated … (not ‘uncle’ now).

‘What do you want?’

‘Let me go … at once!’

‘Why?’

‘Let me go, or I shall do mischief, I shall set the house on fire or cut some one’s throat.’ Misha suddenly began trembling. ‘Tell them to give me back my clothes, and let a cart take me to the highroad, and let me have some money, however little!’

‘Are you displeased, then, at anything?’

‘I can’t live like this!’ he shrieked at the top of his voice. ‘I can’t live in your respectable, thrice-accursed house! It makes me sick, and ashamed to live so quietly! … How you manage to endure it!’

‘That is,’ I interrupted in my turn, ‘you mean–you can’t live without drink….’

‘Well, yes! yes!’ he shrieked again: ‘only let me go to my brethren, my friends, to the beggars! … Away from your respectable, loathsome species!’

I was about to remind him of his sworn promises, but Misha’s frenzied look, his breaking voice, the convulsive tremor in his limbs,–it was all so awful, that I made haste to get rid of him; I said that his clothes should be given him at once, and a cart got ready; and taking a note for twenty-five roubles out of a drawer, I laid it on the table. Misha had begun to advance in a menacing way towards me,–but on this, suddenly he stopped, his face worked, flushed, he struck himself on the breast, the tears rushed from his eyes, and muttering, ‘Uncle! angel! I know I’m a ruined man! thanks! thanks!’ he snatched up the note and ran away.