, I tell you, and he'd make you
split your sides with laughter. It's a pity, he ran off somewhere. Have
you had dinner?"

"Not yet. And how's Aleksandra?" asked Foma, somewhat deafened by the
loud speech of this tall, frank, red-faced fellow clad in a motley
costume.

"Well, do you know," said the latter with a frown, "that Aleksandra of
yours is a nasty woman! She's so obscure, it's tiresome to be with her,
the devil take her! She's as cold as a frog,--brrr! I guess I'll send
her away."

"Cold--that's true," said Foma and became pensive. "Every person must
do his work in a first class manner," said the distiller's son,
instructively. "And if you become some one's s mistress you must perform
your duty in the best way possible, if you are a decent woman. Well,
shall we have a drink?"

They had a drink. And naturally they got drunk. A large and noisy
company gathered in the hotel toward evening. And Foma, intoxicated, but
sad and calm, spoke to them with heavy voice:

"That's the way I understand it: some people are worms, others sparrows.
The sparrows are the merchants. They peck the worms. Such is their
destined lot. They are necessary But I and you--all of you--are to no
purpose. We live so that we cannot be compared to anything--without
justification, merely at random. And we are utterly unnecessary. But
even these here, and everybody else, to what purpose are they? You must
understand that. Brethren! We shall all burst! By God! And why shall
we burst? Because there is always something superfluous in us, there
is something superfluous in our souls. And all our life is superfluous!
Comrades! I weep. To what purpose am I? I am unnecessary! Kill me, that
I may die; I want to die."

And he wept, shedding many drunken tears. A drunken, small-sized,
swarthy man sat down close to him, began to remind him of something,
tried to kiss him, and striking a knife against the table, shouted:

"True! Silence! These are powerful words! Let the elephants and the
mammoths of the disorder of life speak! The raw Russian conscience
speaks holy words! Roar on, Gordyeeff! Roar at everything!" And again
he clutched at Foma's shoulders, flung himself on his breast, raising
to Foma's face his round, black, closely-cropped head, which was
ceaselessly turning about on his shoulders on all sides, so that Foma
was unable to see his face, and he was angry at him for this, and kept
on pushing him aside, crying excitedly:

"Get away! Where