e old man, with a wave of his hand, "the woman wouldn't
let me, and I shouldn't care to myself. A hundred times you have
tried to drag me out of the pit, and I have tried myself, but nothing
came of it. Give it up. I must stick in my filthy hole. This minute,
here I am sitting, looking at your angel face, yet something is
drawing me home to my hole. Such is my fate. You can't draw a
dung-beetle to a rose. But it's time I was going, my boy. It's
getting dark."

"Wait a minute then, I'll come with you. I have to go to town to-day
myself."

Both put on their overcoats and went out. When a little while
afterwards they were driving in a cab, it was already dark, and
lights began to gleam in the windows.

"I've robbed you, Borenka!" the father muttered. "Poor children,
poor children! It must be a dreadful trouble to have such a father!
Borenka, my angel, I cannot lie when I see your face. You must
excuse me. . . . What my depravity has come to, my God. Here I have
just been robbing you, and put you to shame with my drunken state;
I am robbing your brothers, too, and put them to shame, and you
should have seen me yesterday! I won't conceal it, Borenka. Some
neighbours, a wretched crew, came to see my virago; I got drunk,
too, with them, and I blackguarded you poor children for all I was
worth. I abused you, and complained that you had abandoned me. I
wanted, you see, to touch the drunken hussies' hearts, and pose as
an unhappy father. It's my way, you know, when I want to screen my
vices I throw all the blame on my innocent children. I can't tell
lies and hide things from you, Borenka. I came to see you as proud
as a peacock, but when I saw your gentleness and kind heart, my
tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and it upset my conscience
completely."

"Hush, father, let's talk of something else."

"Mother of God, what children I have," the old man went on, not
heeding his son. "What wealth God has bestowed on me. Such children
ought not to have had a black sheep like me for a father, but a
real man with soul and feeling! I am not worthy of you!"

The old man took off his cap with a button at the top and crossed
himself several times.

"Thanks be to Thee, O Lord!" he said with a sigh, looking from side
to side as though seeking for an ikon. "Remarkable, exceptional
children! I have three sons, and they are all like one. Sober,
steady, hard-working, and what brains! Cabman, what brains! Grigory
alone has brains enoug