thin moustache, which twitched
upward each time the little man smiled. His face was yellow, bloated,
wrinkled, and his black, vivacious small sparkling eyes did not seem to
belong to him.

Having grown tired of looking at him, Foma slowly began to examine the
room with his eyes. On the large nails, driven into the walls, hung
piles of newspapers, which made the walls look as though covered with
swellings. The ceiling was pasted with paper which had been white once
upon a time; now it was puffed up like bladders, torn here and there,
peeled off and hanging in dirty scraps; clothing, boots, books, torn
pieces of paper lay scattered on the floor. Altogether the room gave one
the impression that it had been scalded with boiling water.

The little man dropped the pen, bent over the table, drummed briskly on
its edge with his fingers and began to sing softly in a faint voice:

"Take the drum and fear not,--And kiss the sutler girl aloud--That's the
sense of learning--And that's philosophy."

Foma heaved a deed sigh and said:

"May I have some seltzer?"

"Ah!" exclaimed the little man, and jumping up from his chair, appeared
at the wide oilcloth-covered lounge, where Foma lay. "How do you do,
comrade! Seltzer? Of course! With cognac or plain?"

"Better with cognac," said Foma, shaking the lean, burning hand which
was outstretched to him, and staring fixedly into the face of the little
man.

"Yegorovna!" cried the latter at the door, and turning to Foma, asked:
"Don't you recognise me, Foma Ignatyevich?"

"I remember something. It seems to me we had met somewhere before."

"That meeting lasted for four years, but that was long ago! Yozhov."

"Oh Lord!" exclaimed Foma, in astonishment, slightly rising from the
lounge. "Is it possible that it is you?"

"There are times, dear, when I don't believe it myself, but a real fact
is something from which doubt jumps back as a rubber ball from iron."

Yozhov's face was comically distorted, and for some reason or other his
hands began to feel his breast.

"Well, well!" drawled out Foma. "But how old you have grown! Ah-ah! How
old are you?"

"Thirty."

"And you look as though you were fifty, lean, yellow. Life isn't sweet
to you, it seems? And you are drinking, too, I see."

Foma felt sorry to see his jolly and brisk schoolmate so worn out,
and living in this dog-hole, which seemed to be swollen from burns. He
looked at him, winked his eyes mournfully and saw that Yozh