drawers and heaps of rags of all kinds from a woman's stiff petticoat to children's little breeches and braces. A tallow candle stood on the chest of drawers.
Instead of the promised bear, Yegorushka saw a big fat Jewess with her hair hanging loose, in a red flannel skirt with black sprigs on it; she turned with difficulty in the narrow space between the bed and the chest of drawers and uttered drawn-out moaning as though she had toothache. On seeing Yegorushka, she made a doleful, woe-begone face, heaved a long drawn-out sigh, and before he had time to look round, put to his lips a slice of bread smeared with honey.
'Eat it, dearie, eat it!' she said. 'You are here without your mamma, and no one to look after you. Eat it up.'
Yegorushka did eat it, though after the goodies and poppy-cakes he had every day at home, he did not think very much of the honey, which was mixed with wax and bees' wings. He ate while Moisey Moisevitch and the Jewess looked at him and sighed.
'Where are you going, dearie?' asked the Jewess.
'To school,' answered Yegorushka.
'And how many brothers and sisters have you got?'
'I am the only one; there are no others.'
'O-oh!' sighed the Jewess, and turned her eyes upward. 'Poor mamma, poor mamma! How she will weep and miss you! We are going to send our Nahum to school in a year. O-oh!'
'Ah, Nahum, Nahum!' sighed Moisey Moisevitch, and the skin of his pale face twitched nervously. 'And he is so delicate.'
The greasy quilt quivered, and from beneath it appeared a child's curly head on a very thin neck; two black eyes gleamed and stared with curiosity at Yegorushka. Still sighing, Moisey Moisevitch and the Jewess went to the chest of drawers and began talking in Yiddish. Moisey Moisevitch spoke in a low bass undertone, and altogether his talk in Yiddish was like a continual 'ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal, . . .' while his wife answered him in a shrill voice like a turkeycock's, and the whole effect of her talk was something like 'Too-too-too-too!' While they were consulting, another little curly head on a thin neck peeped out of the greasy quilt, then a third, then a fourth. . . . If Yegorushka had had a fertile imagination he might have imagined that the hundred-headed hydra was hiding under the quilt.
'Ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal!' said Moisey Moisevitch.
'Too-too-too-too!' answered the Jewess.
The consultation ended in the Jewess's diving with a deep sigh into the chest of drawers, and, unwrapping some sort of green rag there, she took out a big rye cake made in the shape of a heart.
'Take it, dearie,' she said, giving Yegorushka the cake; 'you have no mamma now -- no one to give you nice things.'
Yegorushka stuck the cake in his pocket and staggered to the door, as he could not go on breathing the foul, sour air in which the innkeeper and his wife lived. Going back to the big room, he settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and gave up trying to check his straying thoughts.
As soon as Kuzmitchov had finished counting out the notes he put them back into the bag. He did not treat them very respectfully and stuffed them into the dirty sack without ceremony, as indifferently as though they had not been money but waste paper.
Father Christopher was talking to Solomon.
'Well, Solomon the Wise!' he said, yawning and making the sign of the cross over his mouth. 'How is business?'
'What sort of business are you talking about?' asked Solomon, and he looked as fiendish, as though it were a hint of some crime on his part.
'Oh, things in general. What are you doing?'
'What am I doing?' Solomon repeated, and he shrugged his shoulders. 'The same as everyone else. . . . You see, I am a menial, I am my brother's servant; my brother's the servant of the visitors; the visitors are Varlamov's servants; and if I had ten millions, Varlamov would be my servant.'
'Why would he be your servant?'
'Why, because there isn't a gentleman or millionaire who isn't ready to lick the hand of a scabby Jew for the sake of making a kopeck. Now, I am a scabby Jew and a beggar. Everybody looks at me as though I were a dog, but if I had money Varlamov would play the fool before me just as Moisey does before you.'
Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov looked at each other. Neither of them understood Solomon. Kuzmitchov looked at him sternly and dryly, and asked:
'How can you compare yourself with Varlamov, you blockhead?'
'I am not such a fool as to put myself on a level with Varlamov,' answered Solomon, looking sarcastically at the speaker. 'Though Varlamov is a Russian, he is at heart a scabby Jew; money and gain are all he lives for, but I threw my money in the stove! I don't want money, or land, or sheep, and there is no need for people to be afraid of me and to take off their hats when I pass. So I am wiser than your Varlamov and more like a man!'
A little later Yegorushka, half asleep, heard Solomon in a hoarse hollow voice choked with hatred, in hurried stuttering phrases, talking about the Jews. At first he talked correctly in Russian, then he fell into the tone of a Jewish recitation, and began speaking as he had done at the fair with an exaggerated Jewish accent.
'Stop! . . .' Father Christopher said to him. 'If you don't like your religion you had better change it, but to laugh at it is a sin; it is only the lowest of the low who will make fun of his religion.'
'You don't understand,' Solomon cut him short rudely. 'I am talking of one thing and you are talking of something else. . . .'
'One can see you are a foolish fellow,' sighed Father Christopher. 'I admonish you to the best of my ability, and you are angry. I speak to you like an old man quietly, and you answer like a turkeycock: 'Bla---bla---bla!' You really
