Shall I disturb their sleep of death,
Oh Lord, Oh Lord, repose my soul!
For it is hopeless in its wounds,
Oh Lord, repose my soul."

Foma shuddered at the sounds of their gloomy wailing, and he hurried
after Yozhov; but before he overtook him the little feuilleton-writer
uttered a hysterical shriek, threw himself chest down upon the ground
and burst out sobbing plaintively and softly, even as sickly children
cry.

"Nikolay!" said Foma, lifting him by the shoulders. "Cease crying;
what's the matter? Oh Lord. Nikolay! Enough, aren't you ashamed?"

But Yozhov was not ashamed; he struggled on the ground, like a fish
just taken from the water, and when Foma had lifted him to his feet, he
pressed close to Foma's breast, clasping his sides with his thin arms,
and kept on sobbing.

"Well, that's enough!" said Foma, with his teeth tightly clenched.
"Enough, dear."

And agitated by the suffering of the man who was wounded by the
narrowness of life, filled with wrath on his account, he turned his face
toward the gloom where the lights of the town were glimmering, and, in
an outburst of wrathful grief, roared in a deep, loud voice:

"A-a-ana-thema! Be cursed! Just wait. You, too, shall choke! Be cursed!"

CHAPTER XI

"LUBAVKA!" said Mayakin one day when he came home from the Exchange,
"prepare yourself for this evening. I am going to bring you a
bridegroom! Prepare a nice hearty little lunch for us. Put out on the
table as much of our old silverware as possible, also bring out the
fruit-vases, so that he is impressed by our table! Let him see that each
and everything we have is a rarity!"

Lubov was sitting by the window darning her father's socks, and her head
was bent low over her work.

"What is all this for, papa?" she asked, dissatisfied and offended.

"Why, for sauce, for flavour. And then, it's in due order. For a girl is
not a horse; you can't dispose of her without the harness."

All aflush with offence, Lubov tossed her head nervously, and flinging
her work aside, cast a glance at her father; and, taking up the socks
again, she bent her head still lower over them. The old man paced the
room to and fro, plucking at his fiery beard with anxiety; his eyes
stared somewhere into the distance, and it was evident that he was all
absorbed in some great complicated thought. The girl understood that he
would not listen to her and would not care to comprehend how degrading
his words were for her.