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Whether it was a result of the medicine he took, or that he had passed a crisis, or that his anger against the doctor cured him, at any rate from then onwards Mezhenétsky took himself in hand and started quite a new life.
“They can’t and won’t keep me here forever,” he thought. “After all, they will liberate me some time. Perhaps—and very likely—there will be a change of Administration (our people are working), and therefore I must take care of my life, to go out strong, healthy, and able to continue the work.”
He took a long time to consider the best way of living to attain his object; and this was how he arranged matters. He went to bed at nine, and whether he slept or not, remained in bed till 5 a.m. Then he got up, made himself tidy, washed, did gymnastics, and then, as he said to himself, went to business. In imagination he walked through the streets of Petersburg, from the Névsky to the Nadézhdinsky, trying to picture to himself all he was likely to see on his way: signboards, houses, policemen, carriages, and the people he might meet. In the Nadézhdinsky Street he entered the house of an acquaintance and fellow-worker, and there, with him and other comrades who dropped in, discussed prospects for the future. They argued, disputed: Mezhenétsky speaking for himself and the others. Sometimes he spoke aloud, and then the sentinel made remarks to him through the window in the door; but Mezhenétsky paid no heed to him, and continued his imaginary day in Petersburg. After spending a couple of hours with his comrade, he returned home to dinner, dined—first in imagination and then in reality, on the food that was brought him—and always ate moderately. Then, again in imagination, he sat at home, sometimes studying history and sometimes mathematics, and sometimes on Sundays literature. Studying history meant choosing a certain period and nation, and recalling all the facts and the chronology belonging to them. The study of mathematics meant working out and mentally solving problems. (He was particularly fond of this occupation.) On Sundays he recalled Poúshkin, Gógol, Shakespeare, or himself composed something.
Before going to bed, he again went for a short imaginary walk; carried on amusing, merry and sometimes serious conversations with comrades, both men and women—some that had really taken place and some that were newly invented. And so it went on till bedtime; and just before lying down he really walked two thousand steps backwards and forwards in his cage for exercise, and when in bed he generally slept.
It was the same the next day. Sometimes he travelled south, and went about inciting the people and arranging riots, and with the people, expelled the landlords and divided the land among the peasants. All this, however, he did not imagine all at once, but gradually, going into every detail. In his fancy the Revolutionary parties always triumphed; the power of the Government grew weaker, and it was obliged to call together a Council. The Imperial family and all the oppressors of the people disappeared, and a Republic was established, and he, Mezhenétsky, was chosen President. Sometimes he reached this climax too quickly, and then he began again from the beginning, and attained his end by other means.
So he lived one, two, three years: occasionally discontinuing this rigorous order of life for a time, but always returning to it again. Fits of insomnia and visions of horrible faces rarely troubled him now, and when they did, he looked at the ventilator and pictured to himself how he would fasten a rope to it, make a noose, and hang himself. He managed to master these fits, and they never lasted long.
Thus he spent nearly seven years. When his term of imprisonment came to an end, and he started on his way to penal servitude in Siberia, he was quite healthy, fresh, and in perfect possession of his mental faculties.