Page:Garshin - A Red Flower (1911).djvu/27

Rh stem, when a heavy hand was laid suddenly upon his shoulder. It was the watchman.

"It is forbidden to break off flowers," said the old muzhik; "and don't step on the flower beds. There are plenty of you madmen; a flower for each, and the whole garden is gone!" persuasively argued the muzhik, still holding him by the shoulder.

The sick man looked in the watchman's face; he silently freed himself from his hands, and in deep agitation walked along the path. "Oh, unfortunates!" thought he, "I'll end it yet. If not to-day, we'll measure our strength to-morrow. And if I'm lost, is it not all the same?"

He diverted himself in the garden till evening, making acquaintances and holding strange conversations, and his companions, giving their attention, seemed keenly interested in his insane ideas, expressed in incoherent and mysterious words. The patient strolled, now with one comrade, now with another, and at the conclusion of the day he was convinced that "all is ready," as he said to himself. "Soon, soon, shall fall apart the iron bars; all these prisoners will depart from here, and go to all the corners of the earth; the whole world shall tremble;