found themselves in the main street of the village in the middle
of which a number of people were gathered together before a tavern.
Nejdanov, paying no heed to Pavel, who was trying to hold him back,
leapt down from the cart with a cry of "Brothers!" The crowd made way
for him and he again began preaching, looking neither to right nor left,
as if furious and weeping at the same time. But things turned out quite
differently than with his former attempt at the barn. An enormous fellow
with a clean-shaven, vicious face, in a short greasy coat, high boots,
and a sheepskin cap, came up to him and clapped him on the shoulder.

"All right! my fine fellow!" he bawled out in a wheezy voice; "but wait
a bit! good deeds must be rewarded. Come along in here. It'll be much
better talking in there." He pulled Nejdanov into the tavern, the others
streamed in after them. "Michaitch!" the fellow shouted, "twopennyworth!
My favourite drink! I want to treat a friend. Who he is, what's his
family, and where he's from, only the devil knows! Drink!" he said,
turning to Nejdanov and handing him a heavy, full glass, wet all over
on the outside, as though perspiring, "drink, if you really have any
feeling for us!" "Drink!" came a chorus of voices. Nejdanov, who seemed
as if in a fever, seized the glass and with a cry of "I drink to you,
children!" drank it off at a gulp. Ugh! He drank it off with the same
desperate heroism with which he would have flung himself in storming
a battery or on a line of bayonets. But what was happening to him?
Something seemed to have struck his spine, his legs, burned his throat,
his chest, his stomach, made the tears come into his eyes. A shudder of
disgust passed all over him. He began shouting at the top of his voice
to drown the throbbing in his head. The dark tavern room suddenly became
hot and thick and suffocating--and people, people everywhere! Nejdanov
began talking, talking incessantly, shouting furiously, in exasperation,
shaking broad rough hands, kissing prickly beards. ... The enormous
fellow in the greasy coat kissed him too, nearly breaking his ribs.
This fellow turned out to be a perfect fiend. "I'll wring the neck," he
shouted, "I'll wring the neck of anyone who dares to offend our brother!
And what's more, I'll make mincemeat of him too... I'll make him cry
out! That's nothing to me. I was a butcher and know how to do such
jobs!" At this he held up an enormous fist covered with freckles.
Someone