My carpentry work ended upon my assignment to the meteorological station, but katorga had still not ended: for the time being, I was deprived of all the rights of my social estate, living in the prison, unable to absent myself to another settlement, liable to be ordered about with a single word as the leadership imagined, and, I was still on Sakhalin. Only my exterior changed. Now that my place of service did not conveniently situate me as one among the gray masses, I began to wear the prisoner cassock and yellow cats (cats, or chirki, as they were called there), with the former tucked into short gray trousers. The local administration's attitude toward me changed. I often happened to meet administrators, officers, and their wives in Mariia Antonovna's apartment, and rather unwillingly got to know them. Nearly everyone treated me extremely warmly. Some, wishing by one or another means to help, frequently invited me to dine at their places (for example, the leader of the military command, Colonel Durov), others gave me small gifts with the same intent. Although I was pleased to see such sympathy from local society, I did not try to take advantage of it. I wasn't suffering from extreme need: the prison leadership paid me fifteen rubles a month for my meteorological observation reports, furthermore, relations sent me funds from time to time, so that I saved my own money through frugal living. I didn't like to dress foppishly and, through spartan habits, insured myself against life's varied vicissitudes. I safeguarded my comparative independence. Like some Roman philosopher delivered into slavery, I strove dearly to liberate my spirit and protect it and not sell out for promised luxuries. I recognized that my masters and I stood at opposite poles, and that any sort of close relations with them were as unstable as a balanced yoke. Preserving one's equilibrium there imposed considerable mental torment! You could hardly allow yourself to speak freely, because with one foolish word or sharply expressed heartfelt gesture— the equilibrium would be broken.