l the same to me. I say that it looks rather
aristocratic to smoke cigars."

"And why should we consider ourselves lower than the aristocrats?" said
Taras, laughing.

"Do, I consider ourselves lower?" exclaimed the old man. "I merely said
it because it looked ridiculous to me, such a sedate old fellow, with
beard trimmed in foreign fashion, cigar in his mouth. Who is he? My
son--he-he-he!" the old man tapped Taras on the shoulder and sprang away
from him, as though frightened lest he were rejoicing too soon, lest
that might not be the proper way to treat that half gray man. And he
looked searchingly and suspiciously into his son's large eyes, which
were surrounded by yellowish swellings.

Taras smiled in his father's face an affable and warm smile, and said to
him thoughtfully:

"That's the way I remember you--cheerful and lively. It looks as though
you had not changed a bit during all these years."

The old man straightened himself proudly, and, striking his breast with
his fist, said:

"I shall never change, because life has no power over him who knows his
own value. Isn't that so?"

"Oh! How proud you are!"

"I must have taken after my son," said the old man with a cunning
grimace. "Do you know, dear, my son was silent for seventeen years out
of pride."

"That's because his father would not listen to him," Taras reminded him.

"It's all right now. Never mind the past. Only God knows which of us is
to blame. He, the upright one, He'll tell it to you--wait! I shall keep
silence. This is not the time for us to discuss that matter. You better
tell me--what have you been doing all these years? How did you come to
that soda factory? How have you made your way?"

"That's a long story," said Taras with a sigh; and emitting from his
mouth a great puff of smoke, he began slowly: "When I acquired
the possibility to live at liberty, I entered the office of the
superintendent of the gold mines of the Remezovs."

"I know; they're very rich. Three brothers. I know them all. One is a
cripple, the other a fool, and the third a miser. Go on!"

"I served under him for two years. And then I married his daughter,"
narrated Mayakin in a hoarse voice.

"The superintendent's? That wasn't foolish at all." Taras became
thoughtful and was silent awhile. The old man looked at his sad face and
understood his son.

"And so you lived with your wife happily," he said. "Well, what can you
do? To the dead belongs paradise, and the