ways are open to you. Do you understand? And why am I talking
to you seriously? Psha!"

"Papa! why don't you want it?" exclaimed Foma, angrily.

"Listen to me! If you are a chimney-sweep, go, carrion, on the roof! If
you are a fireman, stand on the watch-tower! And each and every sort of
men must have its own mode of life. Calves cannot roar like bears! If
you live your own life; go on, live it! And don't talk nonsense,
and don't creep where you don't belong. Arrange your life after your
pattern." And from the dark lips of the old man gushed forth in a
trembling, glittering stream the jarring, but confident and bold words
so familiar to Foma. Seized with the thought of freedom, which seemed to
him so easily possible, Foma did not listen to his words. This idea had
eaten into his brains, and in his heart the desire grew stronger and
stronger to sever all his connections with this empty and wearisome
life, with his godfather, with the steamers, the barges and the
carouses, with everything amidst which it was narrow and stifling for
him to live.

The old man's words seemed to fall on him from afar; they were blended
with the clatter of the dishes, with the scraping of the lackey's feet
along the floor, with some one's drunken shouting. Not far from them sat
four merchants at a table and argued loudly:

"Two and a quarter--and thank God!"

"Luka Mitrich! How can I?"

"Give him two and a half!"

"That's right! You ought to give it, it's a good steamer, it tows
briskly."

"My dear fellows, I can't. Two and a quarter!"

"And all this nonsense came to your head from your youthful passion!"
said Mayakin, importantly, accompanying his words with a rap on the
table. "Your boldness is stupidity; all these words of yours are
nonsense. Would you perhaps go to the cloister? or have you perhaps a
longing to go on the highways?"

Foma listened in silence. The buzzing noise about him now seemed to move
farther away from him. He pictured himself amid a vast restless crowd
of people; without knowing why they bustled about hither and thither,
jumped on one another; their eyes were greedily opened wide; they were
shouting, cursing, falling, crushing one another, and they were all
jostling about on one place. He felt bad among them because he did not
understand what they wanted, because he had no faith in their words,
and he felt that they had no faith in themselves, that they understood
nothing. And if one were to tear himself a