The secretary’s indifference and calm tone restored Avdeyev’s composure.  Going back to his shop and finding friends there, he again began drinking, eating caviare, and airing his views.  He almost forgot the police search, and he was only troubled by one circumstance which he could not help noticing:  his left leg was strangely numb, and his stomach for some reason refused to do its work.

That evening destiny dealt another overwhelming blow at Avdeyev:  at an extraordinary meeting of the town council all members who were on the staff of the bank, Avdeyev among them, were asked to resign, on the ground that they were charged with a criminal offence.  In the morning he received a request to give up immediately his duties as churchwarden.

After that Avdeyev lost count of the blows dealt him by fate, and strange, unprecedented days flitted rapidly by, one after another, and every day brought some new, unexpected surprise.  Among other things, the examining magistrate sent him a summons, and he returned home after the interview, insulted and red in the face.

“He gave me no peace, pestering me to tell him why I had signed.  I signed, that’s all about it.  I didn’t do it on purpose.  They brought the papers to the shop and I signed them.  I am no great hand at reading writing.”

Young men with unconcerned faces arrived, sealed up the shop, and made an inventory of all the furniture of the house.  Suspecting some intrigue behind this, and, as before, unconscious of any wrongdoing, Avdeyev in his mortification ran from one Government office to another lodging complaints.  He spent hours together in waiting-rooms, composed long petitions, shed tears, swore.  To his complaints the public prosecutor and the examining magistrate made the indifferent and rational reply:  “Come to us when you are summoned:  we have not time to attend to you now.”  While others answered:  “It is not our business.”

The secretary, an educated man, who, Avdeyev thought, might have helped him, merely shrugged his shoulders and said: 

“It’s your own fault.  You shouldn’t have been a sheep.”

The old man exerted himself to the utmost, but his left leg was still numb, and his digestion was getting worse and worse.  When he was weary of doing nothing and was getting poorer and poorer, he made up his mind to go to his father’s mill, or to his brother, and begin dealing in corn.  His family went to his father’s and he was left alone.  The days flitted by, one after another.  Without a family, without a shop, and without money, the former churchwarden, an honoured and respected man, spent whole days going the round of his friends’ shops, drinking, eating, and listening to advice.  In the mornings and in the evenings, to while away the time, he went to church.  Looking for hours together at the ikons, he did not pray, but pondered.  His conscience was clear, and he ascribed his position to mistake and misunderstanding; to his mind, it was all due to the fact that the officials and the examining magistrates were young men and inexperienced.  It seemed to him that if he were to talk it over in detail and open his heart to some elderly judge, everything would go right again.  He did not understand his judges, and he fancied they did not understand him.