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From Pashka's bed part of another ward could be seen with two beds; on one a very pale wasted-looking man with an india-rubber bottle on his head was asleep; on the other a peasant with his head tied up, looking very like a woman, was sitting with his arms spread out. After making Pashka sit down, the assistant went out and came back a little later with a bundle of clothes under her arm.
On the very next day they had to send off to a charitable institution into a lunatic asylum the unfortunate Pashka, who had fallen completely into feeble-mindedness. The doctors said that there was no hope of her ever improving.
Going back to his own ward, Pashka sat down on his bed and began waiting for the doctor to come and take him to catch finches, or to go to the fair. But the doctor did not come. He got a passing glimpse of a hospital assistant at the door of the next ward. He bent over the patient on whose head lay a bag of ice, and cried: "Mihailo!" But the sleeping man did not stir.
Pashka looked round at them, and he too was silent, though he was seeing a great deal that was strange and funny. Only once, when a lad came into the waiting-room hopping on one leg, Pashka longed to hop too; he nudged his mother's elbow, giggled in his sleeve, and said: "Look, mammy, a sparrow." "Hush, child, hush!" said his mother.
When he came to himself it was daylight, and a voice he knew very well, that had promised him a fair, finches, and a fox, was saying beside him: "Well, you are an idiot, Pashka! Aren't you an idiot? You ought to be beaten, but there's no one to do it." GRISHA, a chubby little boy, born two years and eight months ago, is walking on the boulevard with his nurse.
They were sitting motionless on their beds, and with their strange faces, in which it was hard to distinguish their features, they looked like heathen idols. "Auntie, why do they look like that?" Pashka asked the nurse. "They have got smallpox, little lad."
While the cigarette smoked, he scolded the woman, and shook his head in time to the song he was humming inwardly, while he thought of something else. Pashka stood naked before him, listening and looking at the smoke. When the cigarette went out, the doctor started, and said in a lower tone: "Well, listen, woman. You can do nothing with ointments and drops in this case.
At first I thought that this was vexation at not being able to explain a simple phenomenon; but afterwards, when I suddenly turned away from the light in horror and caught hold of Pashka with one hand, it became clear that I was overcome with terror....
There he recognised the waiting-room in which he had sat that morning, and began looking for the door into the open air. The latch creaked, there was a whiff of cold wind, and Pashka, stumbling, ran out into the yard. He had only one thought to run, to run! He did not know the way, but felt convinced that if he ran he would be sure to find himself at home with his mother.
Through the window he saw the merry affable doctor sitting at the table reading a book. Laughing with happiness, Pashka stretched out his hands to the person he knew and tried to call out, but some unseen force choked him and struck at his legs; he staggered and fell down on the steps unconscious.
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