Book 3 Chapter 19 Why Is It Done?

It had cleared up and was starlight. Except in a few places the
mud was frozen hard when Nekhludoff returned to his inn and
knocked at one of its dark windows. The broad-shouldered labourer
came barefooted to open the door for him and let him in. Through
a door on the right, leading to the back premises, came the loud
snoring of the carters, who slept there, and the sound of many
horses chewing oats came from the yard. The front room, where a
red lamp was burning in front of the icons, smelt of wormwood and
perspiration, and some one with mighty lungs was snoring behind a
partition. Nekhludoff undressed, put his leather travelling
pillow on the oilcloth sofa, spread out his rug and lay down,
thinking over all he had seen and heard that day; the boy
sleeping on the liquid that oozed from the stinking tub, with his
head on the convict's leg, seemed more dreadful than all else.

Unexpected and important as his conversation with Simonson and
Katusha that evening had been, he did not dwell on it; his
situation in relation to that subject was so complicated and
indefinite that he drove the thought from his mind. But the
picture of those unfortunate beings, inhaling the noisome air,
and lying in the liquid oozing out of the stinking tub,
especially that of the boy, with his innocent face asleep on the
leg of a criminal, came all the more vividly to his mind, and he
could not get it out of his head.