the second time already,
on a similar charge, Zakhar Kirillov Robustov had been dragged to court.
Robustov was a stout, short merchant with a round face and cheerful blue
eyes. Among these people there was hardly one about whom Foma did not
know something disgraceful.

And he knew that they were all surely envying the successful Kononov,
who was constantly increasing the number of his steamers from year to
year. Many of those people were at daggers' points with one another,
none of them would show mercy to the others in the battlefield of
business, and all knew wicked and dishonest things about one another.
But now, when they gathered around Kononov, who was triumphant and
happy, they blended in one dense, dark mass, and stood and breathed as
one man, concentrated and silent, surrounded by something invisible yet
firm, by something which repulsed Foma from them, and which inspired him
with fear of them.

"Impostors!" thought he, thus encouraging himself.

And they coughed gently, sighed, crossed themselves, bowed, and,
surrounding the clergy in a thick wall, stood immovable and firm, like
big, black rocks.

"They are pretending!" Foma exclaimed to himself. Beside him stood the
hump-backed, one-eyed Pavlin Gushchin--he who, not long before, had
turned the children of his half-witted brother into the street as
beggars--he stood there and whispered penetratingly as he looked at the
gloomy sky with his single eye:

"Oh Lord! Do not convict me in Thy wrath, nor chastise me in Thy
indignation."

And Foma felt that that man was addressing the Lord with the most
profound and firm faith in His mercy.

"Oh Lord, God of our fathers, who hadst commanded Noah, Thy servant, to
build an ark for the preservation of the world," said the priest in his
deep bass voice, lifting his eyes and outstretching his hands skyward,
"protect also this vessel and give unto it a guarding angel of good and
peace. Guard those that will sail upon it."

The merchants in unison made the sign of the cross, with wide swings
of their arms, and all their faces bore the expression of one
sentiment--faith in the power of prayer. All these pictures took root
in Foma's memory and awakened in him perplexity as to these people, who,
being able to believe firmly in the mercy of God, were, nevertheless,
so cruel unto man. He watched them persistently, wishing to detect their
fraud, to convince himself of their falsehood.

Their grave firmness angered him,