Chapter I

I RECEIVED the following letter:

"DEAR SIR, PAVEL ANDREITCH!

"Not far from you -- that is to say, in the village of Pestrovo -- very distressing incidents are taking place, concerning which I feel it my duty to write to you. All the peasants of that village sold their cottages and all their belongings, and set off for the province of Tomsk, but did not succeed in getting there, and have come back. Here, of course, they have nothing now； everything belongs to other people. They have settled three or four families in a hut, so that there are no less than fifteen persons of both sexes in each hut, not counting the young children； and the long and the short of it is, there is nothing to eat. There is famine and there is a terrible pestilence of hunger, or spotted, typhus； literally every one is stricken. The doctor‘s assistant says one goes into a cottage and what does one see? Every one is sick, every one delirious, some laughing, others frantic； the hu

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