The round window of my chamber looked out upon the prison-yard. It was very high from the ground, but by placing the table against the wall and mounting upon it, I could see everything that was going on in the courtyard. Beneath the window, under the slope of the roof, the doves had built themselves a nest, and when I set about looking out of my window down into the court below, they began cooing above my head.

[1] The original title of this tale was "Zazubrina." Written in 1897.

I had lots of time to make the acquaintance of the inhabitants of the prison-yard from my coign of vantage, and I knew already that the merriest member of that grim and grey population went by the name of Zazubrina.

He was a square-set, stout little fellow, with a ruddy face and a high forehead, from beneath which his large bright, lively eyes sparkled incessantly.

His cap he wore at the back of his head, his ears stuck out on both sides of his shaven head as if in joke; he never fastened the strings of his shirt-collar, he never buttoned his vest, and every movement of his muscles gave you to understand that he was a merry soul and a pronounced enemy of anger and sadness.

Always laughing, alert and noisy, he was the idol of the yard; he was always surrounded by a group of grey comrades, and he would always be laughing and regaling them with all sorts of curious pranks, brightening up their dull and sorrowful life with his hearty, genuine gaiety....

On one occasion he appeared at the door of the prison-quarters ready to go for a walk with three rats whom he had dexterously harnessed as if they were horses. Sometimes his inventiveness took a cruel form. Thus, for instance, he once, somehow, glued to the wall the long hair of one of the prisoners, a mere lad, who was sitting on the floor asleep against the wall, and, when his hair had dried, suddenly awoke him. The lad quickly leaped to his feet, and clapping his slim lean hands to the back of his head, fell weeping to the ground. The prisoners laughed, and Zazubrina was satisfied. Afterwards—I saw it through the window—he fell a comforting the lad, who had left a no inconsiderable tuft of hair on the wall.

Besides Zazubrina, there was yet another favourite in the prison—a plump, reddish kitten, a tiny, playful little animal, pampered by everyone. Whenever they went out for a walk, the prisoners used to hunt him up and take him with them a good part of the way, passing him on from hand to hand. They would run after him, too, in the yard, and let him cling on to their hands and feet with his claws, delighting in the sportive tricks of their pet.

Whenever the kitten appeared on the scene, he diverted the general attention from Zazubrina, and the latter was by no means pleased with this preference. Zazubrina was at heart an artist, and as an artist had an inordinately good opinion of his own talents. When his public was drawn away from him by the kitten, he remained alone and sat him down in some hole or corner in the courtyard, and from thence would watch the comrades who had forgotten him just then. And I, from my window, would observe him, and felt everything with which his soul was full at such moments. It appeared to me that Zazubrina must infallibly kill the kitten at the first opportunity, and I was sorry for the merry prisoner who was thus always longing to be the centre of general attention. Of all the tendencies of man, this is the most injurious, for nothing kills the soul so quickly as this longing to please people.

When you have to sit in a prison—even the life of the fungi on its walls seems interesting. You will understand therefore the interest with which I observed from my window the little tragedy going on below there, this jealousy of a kitten on the part of a man—you will understand, too, the patience with which I awaited the dénouement. The dénouement was, indeed, approaching. It happened in this wise.

On a bright, sunny day, when the prisoners were pouring out of doors into the courtyard, Zazubrina observed in a corner of the yard a pail of green paint, left behind by the painters who were painting the roof of the prison. He approached it, pondered over it, and, dipping a finger into the paint, adorned himself with a pair of green whiskers. These green whiskers on his red face drew forth a burst of laughter. A certain hobbledehoy present, wishing to appropriate Zazubrina\'s idea, began forthwith to paint his upper lip; but Zazubrina spoiled his fun for him by dipping his hand in the pail and adroitly besprinkling his whole physiognomy. The hobbledehoy spluttered and shook his head, Zazubrina danced around him, and the public kept on laughing, and egged on its jester with cries of encouragement.

At that very moment the red kitten suddenly appeared in the yard. Leisurely he entered the courtyard, gracefully lifting his paws, trotting along with tail erect, and evidently without the slightest fear of coming to grief beneath the feet of the crowd frantically careering round Zazubrina and the bespattered hobbledehoy, who was violently rubbing away with the palm of his hand the mass of oil and verdigris which covered his face.

"My brothers!" someone suddenly exclaimed, "pussy is coming."

"Pussy! Ah, the little rogue!"

"What ho, ginger! Puss, puss, puss!"

They caught up the cat and he was passed from hand to hand; everybody caressed him.

"Look, there\'s no starving there! What a fat little tummy!"

"What a big cat he\'s growing!"

"And what claws he has got, the little devil!"

"Let him go! Let him play as he likes!"

"Well, I\'ll give him a back! Play away, puss!"

Zazubrina was deserted. He stood alone, wiping the green paint off his whiskers with his fingers, and watched the kitten leaping on to the backs and shoulders of the prisoners. Whenever he displayed a wish to sit still on any particular shoulder or back, the men would wriggle about and shake him off, and then he would set off leaping and bounding again from one shoulder to the next. This diverted them all exceedingly, and the laughter was incessant.

"Come, my friends! let us paint the cat!" resounded the voice of Zazubrina. It sounded just as if Zazubrina, in proposing this pastime, at the same time begged them to consent to it.

There was a commotion among the crowd of prisoners.

"But it will be the death of him," cried one.

"Paint the poor beast—what a thing to say!"

"What! paint a live animal, Zazubrina! You deserve a hiding!"

"I call it a devilish good joke," cried a little, broad-shouldered man with a fiery-red beard, enthusiastically.

Zazubrina already held the kitten in his hands, and went with it towards the pail of paint, and then Zazubrina began singing:

"Look, my brothers! look at that!
See me paint the ginger cat!
Paint him well, and paint him green,
And then we\'ll dance upon the scene."

There was a burst of laughter, and holding their sides, the prisoners made a way in their midst, and I saw quite plainly how Zazubrina, seizing the kitten by the tail, flung it into the pail, and then fell a singing and dancing:

"Stop that mewing! cease to squall!
Would you your godfather maul?"

Peals of laughter!

"Oh, crooked-bellied Judas!" piped one squeaky voice.

"Alas, Batyushka!"[2] groaned another.

[2] Little father.

They were stifled, suffocated with laughter. Laughter twisted the bodies of these people, bent them double, vibrated and gurgled in the air—a mighty, devil-may-care laughter, growing louder continually, and reaching the very confines of hysteria. Smiling faces, in white kerchiefs, looked down from the windows of the women\'s quarters into the yard. The Inspector, squeezing his back to the wall, poked out his brawny body, and, holding it with both hands, discharged his thick, bass, overpowering laugh in regular salvoes.

The joke scattered the folks in all directions around the pail. Performing astounding antics with his legs, Zazubrina danced with all his might, singing by way of accompaniment:

"Ah, life is a merry thing,
As the grey cat knew, I ween;
And her son, the ginger kitten,
Now lives in a world all green."

"Yes, that it will, deuce take you," cried the man with the fiery-red beard.

But Zazubrina could not contain himself. Around him roared the senseless laughter of all these grey people, and Zazubrina knew that he, and he alone, was the occasion of all their laughter. In all his gestures, in every grimace of his mobile comic face, this consciousness manifestly proclaimed itself, and his whole body twitched with the enjoyment of his triumph. He had already seized the kitten by the head, and wiping from its fur the superfluous paint, with the ecstasy of the artist conscious of his victory over the mob, never ceased dancing and improvising:

"My dear little brothers,
In the calendar let us look,
Here\'s a kitten to be christened,
And no name for it in the book."

Everything laughed around the mob of prisoners, intoxicated by this senseless mirth. The sun laughed upon the panes of glass in the iron-grated windows. The blue sky smiled down upon the courtyard of the prison, and even its dirty old walls seemed to be smiling with the smile of beings who feel obliged to stifle all mirth, however it may run riot within them. From behind the gratings of the windows of the women\'s department the faces of women looked down upon the yard, they also laughed, and their teeth glistened in the sun. Everything around was transformed, as it were, threw off its dull, grey tone, so full of anguish and weariness, and awoke to merriment, impregnated with that purifying laughter which, like the sun, made the very dirt look more decent.

Placing the green kitten on the grass, little islets of which, springing up between the stones, variegated the prison-yard, Zazubrina, excited, well-nigh blown, and covered with sweat, still, continued his wild dance.

But the laughter had already died away. He was overdoing it, very much overdoing it. The people were getting tired of him. Someone, here and there, still shrieked hysterically; a few continued to laugh, but already there were pauses. At last there were moments when the silence was general, save for the singing, dancing Zazubrina, and the kitten which mewed softly and piteously as it lay on the grass. It was scarcely distinguishable from the grass in colour, and, no doubt, because the paint had blinded it and hampered its movements, the poor slippery, big-headed creature senselessly tottered on his trembling paws, standing still as if glued to the grass, and all the while it kept on mewing, Zazubrina commented on the movements of the kitten as follows:

"Look ye, Christian people, look,
The green cat seeks a private nook,
The wholesome ginger-coloured puss
To find a place in vain makes fuss."

"Very clever, no doubt, you hound," said a red-haired lad.

The public regarded its artist with satiated eyes.

"How it mews!" observed the hobbledehoy prisoner, twisting his head in the direction of the kitten, and he looked at his comrades. They regarded the kitten in silence.

"Do you think he\'ll be green all his life long?" asked the lad.

"All his life long, indeed!—how long do you think he will live, then?" began a tall, grey-bearded prisoner, squatting down beside poor puss; "don\'t you see he\'s dying in the sun, his fur is all sticking to him like glue; he\'ll turn up his toes soon...."

The kitten mewed spasmodically, producing a reaction in the sentiments of the prisoners.

"Turn up his toes, eh?" said the hobbledehoy, "suppose we try to wash it off him?"

Nobody answered him The little green lump writhed at the feet of the rough fellows, a pitiable object of utter helplessness.

"Pooh! I\'m all of a muck sweat!" screamed Zazubrina, flinging himself on the ground. Nobody took the slightest notice of him.

The hobbledehoy bent over the kitten and took it up in his arms, but immediately put it on the ground again. "It\'s all burning hot," he explained.

Then he regarded his comrades, and sorrowfully said:

"Poor puss, look at him! We shall not have our puss much longer. What was the use of killing the poor beast, eh?"

"Wait! I think it\'s picking up a bit," said the red-haired man.

The shapeless green creature was still writhing on the grass; twenty pairs of eyes were following its movements, and there was not the shadow of a smile in any of them. All were serious, all were silent, all of them were as miserable to look upon as that kitten, just as if it had communicated its suffering to them and they were feeling its pangs.

"Pick up a bit, indeed!" laughed the hobbledehoy sardonically, raising his voice, "very much so! Poor puss has had his day. We all loved him. Why did we torture him so? Let someone put him out of his misery."

"And who was the cause of it all?" shrieked the red-haired prisoner savagely. "Why there he is, with his devilish joke!"

"Come," said Zazubrina soothingly, "didn\'t the whole lot of you agree to it?"

And he hugged himself as if he were cold.

"The whole lot of us, indeed!" sneered the hobbledehoy, "I like that. You alone are to blame!—yes, you are!"

"Don\'t you roar, pray, you bull-calf!" meekly suggested Zazubrina.

The grey-headed old man took up the kitten, and after carefully examining it, pronounced his opinion:

"If we were to dip it in kerosene we might wash the paint off."

"If you\'ll take my advice you\'ll seize it by the tail and smash it against the wall," said Zazubrina, adding, with a laugh, "that\'s the simplest way out of it."

"What?" roared the red-haired man, "and if I were to treat you the same way, how would you like it?"

"The devil," screamed the hobbledehoy, and, snatching the kitten out of the old man\'s hands, he set off running. The old man and a few of the others went after him.

Then Zazubrina remained alone in the midst of a group of people, who glowered upon him with evil and threatening eyes. They seemed to be waiting for something from him.

"Remember, I am not alone, my friends," whined Zazubrina.

"Shut up!" shrieked the red-haired man, looking at the door; "not alone! Who else is there, then?"

"Why the whole lot of you here," piped the jester nervously.

"You hound, you!"

The red-haired man shook his clenched fist in Zazubrina\'s very teeth. The artist dodged back only to get a violent blow in the nape of the neck.

"My friends ..." he implored piteously. But his friends had taken note that the two warders were a good way off, and, thronging quickly round their favourite, knocked him off his legs with a few blows. Seen from a little distance the group might easily have been taken for a party engaged in lively conversation. Surrounded and concealed by them, Zazubrina lay there at their feet. Occasionally some dull thuds were audible—they were kicking away at Zazubrina\'s ribs, kicking deliberately, without the least hurry, each man waiting in turn for a particularly favourable kicking spot to be revealed as his neighbour, after planting his blow, wriggled his foot out of action.

Three minutes or so passed thus. Suddenly the voice of the warder resounded in their ears:

"Now, you devils! what are you about there?"

The prisoners did not leave off the tormenting process immediately. One by one they slowly tore themselves away from Zazubrina, and as each one of them went away, he gave him a parting kick.

When they had all gone, he still remained lying on the ground. He lay on his stomach, and his shoulders were all shivering—no doubt he was weeping—and he kept on coughing and hawking. Presently, very cautiously, as if fearing to fall to pieces, he slowly began to raise himself from the ground, leaning heavily on his left arm, then bending one leg beneath him, and whining like a sick dog, sat down on the ground.

"You\'re pretending!" screeched the red-haired man in a threatening voice. Then Zazubrina made an effort, and quickly stood on his feet.

Then he tottered to one of the walls of the prison. One arm was pressed close to his breast, with the other he groped his way along. There he now stood, holding on to the wall with his hand, his head hanging down towards the ground. He coughed repeatedly.

I saw how dark drops were falling on to the ground; they also glistened quite plainly on the grey ground of the prison wall.

And so as not to defile with his blood the official place of detention, Zazubrina kept on doing his best to make it drip on the ground, so that not a single drop should fall on the wall.

How they did laugh and jeer at him to be sure....

From henceforth the kitten vanished. And Zazubrina no longer had a rival to divide with him the attention of the prisoners.