Since settling into our private apartment, my outside earnings had to a certain extent come to an end. After prison, a peasant hut seemed a comfortable and spacious dwelling. Everything in the world is relative. Only after a forced stay in a ward can it be appreciated how nice it is to have your own niche and to keep it clean and tidy; only then do you understand how enjoyable it is to avoid the din of the crowd and the pointless conversations.

While I was still in the prison and didn't understand katorga, I happened to speak with an imprisoned comrade who had just returned from Siberia.

“Tell me,” I asked him, “where is better, or perhaps more correctly, where is worse: among the incessant throng of folks in katorga or, as you now find yourself, in solitary confinement?”

“Difficult choice,” he answered. “Now, if you’re not allowed to separate yourself, then one or the other is alternately better. Life in solitary confinement is difficult, but it's no great joy in a prison dormitory. That rumbling herd is so utterly annoying, and per force one and the same person is associated with you and so quickly scrutinized and irritating, that you gladly go either into the hole or the hospital, if only to be alone to concentrate for a bit, to gaze into your soul… However, I didn't find myself in actual seclusion for long, and have never experienced, like you, years of agonizing isolation. But now, having tried one and the other type of incarceration, I nevertheless personally would prefer a general prison ward over solitary. It's not for nothing that, since ancient times, the proverb in Rus goes: “Death is beautiful in public.”

The doctor's diagnosis had proven to be correct. Living apart from the prison, I began improving my health. My activity also noticeably improved. Among other things, exiles’ children began coming to my apartment to learn singing. One of them, Semën Alaev, an anemic, pale boy of twelve, looked rather sullen and morose and answered questions curtly and timidly. Knowing of his family's poverty, I pitied the sick boy and sheltered him in my room.

At first, I gave him a lot of my time, busying him with, in addition to singing, the Russian language, mathematics, and other subjects, but his repeated faints made me moderate my activity.