"There just was drunkenness and thieving and carrying on in the bakery! Good God! But I didn't interfere; I just did what they said, and they didn't tell me to superintend or look after things. When my mates saw that I obeyed them, and worked enough for two, and didn't meddle with anything, they began to carry on worse than ever. It was like a tavern for the drinking that went on. The inspector came one, two, three times: everyone in the bakery was drunk; I was the only one at work and kneading the loaves of bread. He looked and went away. He came again the next day, and there was quite a battle going on in the house; they were having a drunken fight. He ordered them to be put into prison, and he asked me again: 'Now you know how to make bread; you've learnt it, haven't you?' So I understood he wasn't joking, and laughed: 'Oh yes, I've learnt it,' I said.
"He put me to be head baker. They dealt out all the flour used in the bakery for the whole week--and there was a lot used, for we baked for more than two hundred people. So I did my work, and weighed the flour to make it last out. Scarcely was the week over, when the inspector came again: 'Well, Maciej,' he said, 'have you had enough flour?' I just said nothing, but took him to the bakery and showed him what was left--nearly three sacks. When he saw that he opened his eyes ever so wide. 'Good! good!' he said; and he called the storekeeper and told him to make a note of how much was left, and to save half of it and give me half as reward.
"Now, in these gold-mines it just happens one way or the other: sometimes such a lot of people come you don't know where to put them, and sometimes, when they start running away, there aren't enough left even to go underground. And that's how it was there: a lot of work, and too few people to do it. First they took one man away from me, and afterwards a second, and after a week still more, so that I was left with one, and then quite alone for a few days. I was standing at the kneading trough and oven from sunrise to sunrise. When the inspector saw that I was without help, and the sweat was running off my forehead, he called out: 'Vodka! Let Maciej have as much as he wants! Drink as much as you like,' he said. I didn't stint myself; but a single glass makes one bad enough, so half a bottle was saved every day. This was my own, and in this way I got nearly a rouble a day.[2]