new master to some place on the Kama, she said to
Foma:

"Goodbye, dear man! Perhaps we may meet again. We're both going the same
way! But I advise you not to give your heart free rein. Enjoy yourself
without looking back at anything. And then, when the gruel is eaten up,
smash the bowl on the ground. Goodbye!"

And she impressed a hot kiss upon his lips, at which her eyes looked
still darker.

Foma was glad that she was leaving him, he had grown tired of her and
her cold indifference frightened him. But now something trembled within
him, he turned aside from her and said in a low voice:

"Perhaps you will not live well together, then come back to me."

"Thank you!" she replied, and for some reason or other burst into hoarse
laughter, which was uncommon with her.

Thus lived Foma, day in and day out, always turning around on one
and the same place, amid people who were always alike, and who never
inspired him with any noble feelings. And then he considered himself
superior to them, because the thoughts of the possibility of freeing
himself from this life was taking deeper and deeper root in his mind,
because the yearning for freedom held him in an ever firmer embrace,
because ever brighter were the pictures as he imagined himself drifting
away to the border of life, away from this tumult and confusion. More
than once, by night, remaining all by himself, he would firmly close his
eyes and picture to himself a dark throng of people, innumerably great
and even terrible in its immenseness. Crowded together somewhere in a
deep valley, which was surrounded by hillocks, and filled with a
dusty mist, this throng jostled one another on the same place in noisy
confusion, and looked like grain in a hopper. It was as though an
invisible millstone, hidden beneath the feet of the crowd, were grinding
it, and people moved about it like waves--now rushing downward to be
ground the sooner and disappear, now bursting upward in the effort to
escape the merciless millstone. There were also people who resembled
crabs just caught and thrown into a huge basket--clutching at one
another, they twined about heavily, crawled somewhere and interfered
with one another, and could do nothing to free themselves from
captivity.

Foma saw familiar faces amid the crowd: there his father is walking
boldly, sturdily pushing aside and overthrowing everybody on his way;
he is working with his long paws, massing everything with his chest, and
laughi