And that which he was experiencing was not the fear of death; death was now rather welcome to him.

Death with all its eternal mysteriousness and incomprehensibility was more acceptable to his reason than this strangely and fantastically changed world.

What is more, death seemed to have been destroyed completely in this insane world of phantoms and puppets, having lost its great and enigmatic significance, becoming something mechanical and only for that reason terrible.

He would be seized, taken, led, hanged, pulled by the feet, the rope would be cut, he would be taken down, carried off and buried.
And the man would have disappeared from the world.
At the trial the nearness of his comrades brought Kashirin to himself.
For an instant he imagined he saw real people; they were sitting and trying him, speaking like human beings, listening, apparently understanding him.

But as he mentally rehearsed the meeting with his mother he clearly felt with the terror of a man who is beginning to lose his reason and who realizes it, that this old woman in the black little kerchief was only an artificial, mechanical puppet, of the kind that can say "pa-pa," "ma-ma," but somewhat better constructed.