oung court officer, bearing
the odd name of Ookhtishchev. As if to make his name appear more
absurd than it really was, he spoke in a loud, ringing tenor, and
altogether--plump, short, round-faced and a lively talker--he looked
like a brand new bell.

"The very best thing in our society is the patroness; the most
reasonable is what we are doing--courting the patroness; the most
difficult is to tell the patroness such a compliment as would satisfy
her; and the most sensible thing is to admire the patroness silently and
hopelessly. So that in reality, you are a member not of 'the Society
of Solicitude,' and so on, but of the Society of Tantaluses, which is
composed of persons bent on pleasing Sophya Medinskaya."

Foma listened to his chatter, now and then looking at the patroness, who
was absorbed in a conversation with the chief of the police; Foma roared
in reply to his interlocutor, pretending to be busy eating, and he
wished that all this would end the sooner. He felt that he was wretched,
stupid, ridiculous and he was certain that everybody was watching and
censuring him. This tied him with invisible shackles, thus checking his
words and his thoughts. At last he went so far, that the line of various
physiognomies, stretched out by the table opposite him, seemed to him a
long and wavy white strip besprinkled with laughing eyes, and all these
eyes were pricking him unpleasantly and painfully.

Mayakin sat near the city mayor, waved his fork in the air quickly,
and kept on talking all the time, now contracting, now expanding the
wrinkles of his face. The mayor, a gray-headed, red-faced, short-necked
man, stared at him like a bull, with obstinate attention and at times he
rapped on the edge of the table with his big finger affirmatively. The
animated talk and laughter drowned his godfather's bold speech, and Foma
was unable to hear a single word of it, much more so that the tenor of
the secretary was unceasingly ringing in his ears:

"Look, there, the archdeacon arose; he is filling his lungs with air; he
will soon proclaim an eternal memory for Ignat Matveyich."

"May I not go away?" asked Foma in a low voice.

"Why not? Everybody will understand this."

The deacon's resounding voice drowned and seemed to have crushed the
noise in the hail; the eminent merchants fixed their eyes on the big,
wide-open mouth, from which a deep sound was streaming forth, and
availing himself of this moment, Foma arose from his seat