It knew well enough
who had died there yesterday and it was preparing now, behind its
black recesses, a rich harvest for its malicious spirit. We passed
through the cholera village and reached the white house of yesterday
at about ten o'clock. As we clattered up to the door I for a moment
closed my eyes. I felt as though I could not face the horrible place,
then summoning my control I boldly challenged it, surveying its long
broken windows, its high doorway, its sunny, insulting garden. We were
met by the stout doctor, whom I had seen before. As he is of some
importance in the events that followed I will mention his
name--Konstantine Feodorovitch Krylov. He was large and stout, a true
Russian type, with a merry laughing face. He had the true Russian
spirit of unconquerable irrational merriment. He laughed at everything
with the gaiety of a man who finds life too preposterous for words. He
had all the Russian untidyness, kindness of heart, gay, ironical
pessimism. "To-morrow" was a word unknown to him: nothing was sacred
to him, and yet at times it seemed as though life were so holy, so
mysterious, that the only way to keep it from careless eyes was by
laughing at it.
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