16
The Ups and Downs of Life
While waiting for the occasional mail to arrive at Orsk, Shevchenko continued writing letters.
In vain did he persuade himself that it was not his friends who had faintheartedly forsaken him, but the post which had not delivered his first letters to the addressees — the bitterness of the insult he felt, and his disappointment in people, became ever deeper, and more and more often there recurred a sense of despair at the thought that he had been rejected by the whole world to the end of his days, and was doomed to the hopeless vegetation of a garrison soldier.
At times a withering contempt grew in his heart — contempt for people who in word seemed to hate czarism as well, but who had not the courage, even secretly expressed in a private letter, to show at le
