All these poor people had wanted to have fun, to spend the great feast joyfully—and Lord! how oppressive and sad this day was for nearly every one of them. Each of them saw it out as if he had been cheated of some hope. Petrov stopped to see me a couple of more times. He had drunk very little that whole day and was almost completely sober. But up to the very last hour he kept expecting that something simply had to happen, something extraordinary, festive, joyful. Though he didn’t say it, you could see it in his eyes. He shuttled tirelessly from one barrack to another. But nothing special
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