In Vain

Yosef was sleeping; he was breathing uniformly, quietly; the light of the lamp fell on his high forehead and open breast. Gustav looked feverishly at that breast. His eyes gleamed with hatred. He sat thus about an hour. All at once he trembled, he came to himself. A sensation was roused in him entirely opposite to any which he had felt up to that moment, a sensation of hunger; he went to the book-shelves, and taking a piece of brown bread, fell to eating it hastily.

CHAPTER IV

Autumn was approaching. It was cold in the rooms of the poorer students. Wrapped in their blankets and wearing caps, they warmed themselves with study. The rooms of those who had something with which to heat their stoves were swarming with comrades. No one visited the club any longer. At first there were efforts to select some other place for a club, but it ended in nothing, because Gustav on the one hand, and on the other Yosef, who had acquired considerable influence among students, resisted together; more especially Yosef, who held that clubs consumed too much time and were of small utility. He desired to introduce reform in this regard, and at last he succeeded. In spite of all opposing opinions he combated for that idea in the University, and especially at Vasilkevich's rooms, where students met with more willingness than elsewhere.