I
    In the hospital yard stands a small outbuilding surrounded by a whole forest of burdocks, thorns, and native weeds. The roof is rusted, chimney half caved in, the stairs on the porch are rotted, overgrown with grass, but only traces remain of the plaster. The front facade faces the hospital, the back — looks onto a field, which it is separated from by a gray hospital fence with nails. These nails, with sharp points facing upwards, and the fence, and outbuilding itself have that peculiar melancholy, a cursed aspect, which we experience only in hospital and prison settings.
    If you are not afraid to get stung by a thorn, then walk along the narrow path leading to the outbuilding, and we will watch what is happening inside. Having opened the first door, we enter into the front hall. Here by the walls and near the stove, are piled entire mountains of hospital rubbish. Mattresses, tattered old robes, pants, shirts with blue stripes,  utterly useless, worn out shoes, — all these rags thrown in piles, crumpled, mixed up, decay and emit a pungent odor.
    Always lying atop the rubbish with a pipe in his teeth is the guard Nikita, an old retired soldier with ruddied stripes. He has a stern, gaunt face, overhanging eyebrows, giving the face the look of a Caucasian Sheperd, and a red nose; he is not tall in stature, lean and wiry in appearance, but he has an imposing bearing and  strong fists. He belongs to the number of those simple-minded, positive, reliable and dull people, that love orderliness more than anything on earth and by that have been convinced, that they must hit them. He hits on the face, the chest, the back, wherever it may fall, and is certain, that without this there would be no order here.    
   Further inside you enter a large, spacious room taking up the whole building, if you do not count the entrance hall. The walls here are smeared with dirty blue colored paint, the ceiling is black with soot, like in a chicken coop, — it is evident, that during winter here the furnaces smoke and there is carbon monoxide. The windows are disfigured from the inside with iron bars. The floor is gray and full of splinters. It smells of sour cabbage, lamp smoke, bedbugs and ammonia, and this stench makes an impression on you the first minute you walk in, as if you were entering a hall of beasts.
       Beds in the room are screwed to the floor. On them sit and lie people in blue hospital gowns and caps, as in ancient times. These— are the madpeople.
    There are five people here in total. Only one is of noble rank, the rest all middling. The first from the door is a tall, thin petit-bourgeois with a red, shiny mustache, and tearful eyes, he sits, propping up his head, and stares at a single point. Day and night he sorrows, shaking his head, breathing deeply and bitterly smiling; he rarely takes part in conversations, and he typically does not answer questions. He eats and drinks mechanically, when they provide. Judging by an tormenting, grating cough, thinness, and ruddiness in the cheeks, he is coming down with tuberculosis.              
    Behind him follows a small, lively, and highly active old man with a sharp beard and with black, curly, like a negro's, hair.  During the day he paces around the ward from one window to the other, or sits on his bed cross-legged and incessantly whistles like a songbird, quietly sings and chuckles. He displays childlike amusement and a lively character at night, when he wakes up for the purpose of praying to God, that is, to thump on his chest with his fists, and stick his finger in the doors. This is the Yid Moshe, an idiot, who lost his mind twenty years ago, when his cap shop went out of business.
  Of all the inhabitants of ward number six, he is the only one allowed to leave the ward and even the hospital courtyard to the outside. He has long enjoyed such privileges, probably, because he is a long time hospital resident and a quiet, harmless idiot, a village fool, who they have long grown accustomed to seeing outside, surrounded by young boys and dogs. In the gown, the funny cap, and in slippers, sometimes barefoot and even without pants, he walks along the streets, stopping by gates and shops, and asks for small change. In one place they give kvas to him, in another— bread, in a third — a coin, so he usually returns to the building sated and rich. Everyhing, that he brings with him, Nikita snatches for his own benefit. The soldier does this roughly, with vigor, turning pockets inside-out and calling God as a witness, that he never any more let a Yid out on the street, and that disorder is worse for him than anything on earth.   
    Moishe loves to serve others. He gives his comrades water, he tucks them in when they sleep, he promises to bring each one coins from the outside and to sew their caps like new; he feeds his neighbor to the left side with a spoon, a cripple. He acts this way not out of sympathy, and not out of any consideration of human attributes, but imitating and uniwittingly obeying Gromov, his neighbor to the right side.
    Ivan Dmitrich Gromov, a man thirty three years old, member of the noble classes, former court officer and government secretary, suffers a mania of persecution. He either lies on the bed curled in a ball, or walks from one corner to another, as if for exercise, sitting very rarely. He is always aroused, excited and anxious with some sort of vague, undefined expectation. The smallest rustle in the entryway, or shout at the door, is enough for him to lift his head and begin to listen: are they not coming after him? Are they not searching for him? And his look at this point expresses extreme discontent and repulsion.     
    I like his broad, high cheek-boned face, always pale and unfortunate, reflecting upon itself, like in a mirror, a soul with struggle tormented and protracted fear. His grimaces are strange and ill, but the fine lines, left on his face by deep genuine suffering are reasonable and intelligent, and in his eyes there is a warm, healthy shine. I like his demeanor, proper, ready to serve and unusually delicate in his treatment of everyone, except for Nikita. When anyone drops a button or a spoon, he quickly hops from the bed and picks it up. Every morning he wishes his companions a good morning, going to sleep— he wishes them goodnight.
    Besides the constantly tense composure and grimacing, his madness is also expressed in the proceeding. Sometimes in the evenings he wraps himself up in his robe and, his whole body shaking, chattering with his teeth, he begins to walk quickly from one corner to the other and among the beds. It resembles, as if he had a strong fever. By the way he suddenly stops and glances at his comrades, it is evident that he wants to say something very important, but, apparently considering, that they will not listen to or understand him, he impatiently shakes his head and continues to pace around. However quickly the urge to speak attains an altitude beyond all considerations, and he yields to his own will and speaks ardently and passionately. His speech is disordered, feverish, like nonsense, scattered and not always understood, but then can be heard in it, in the words, and also in the tone of voice, something extraordinarily decent. When he speaks, you recognize in him a madman and a person. It is difficult to transfer his senseless words to paper. He speaks of human vulgarity, of violence, trampling on justice, of a beautiful life, that with time will appear on earth, of the window grates, recalling to him every minute of the dullness and cruelty of its perpetrators. It turns out being a disorderly, incoherent potpourri made up of old, but still incomplete songs.