Rothschild, smiling and bowing, came to meet Yakov.

“I was looking for you, uncle,” he said.  “Moisey Ilyitch sends you his greetings and bids you come to him at once.”

Yakov felt in no mood for this.  He wanted to cry.

“Leave me alone,” he said, and walked on.

“How can you,” Rothschild said, fluttered, running on in front.  “Moisey Ilyitch will be offended!  He bade you come at once!”

Yakov was revolted at the Jew’s gasping for breath and blinking, and having so many red freckles on his face.  And it was disgusting to look at his green coat with black patches on it, and all his fragile, refined figure.

“Why are you pestering me, garlic?” shouted Yakov.  “Don’t persist!”

The Jew got angry and shouted too: 

“Not so noisy, please, or I’ll send you flying over the fence!”

“Get out of my sight!” roared Yakov, and rushed at him with his fists.  “One can’t live for you scabby Jews!”

Rothschild, half dead with terror, crouched down and waved his hands over his head, as though to ward off a blow; then he leapt up and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him:  as he ran he gave little skips and kept clasping his hands, and Yakov could see how his long thin spine wriggled.  Some boys, delighted at the incident, ran after him shouting “Jew!  Jew!” Some dogs joined in the chase barking.  Someone burst into a roar of laughter, then gave a whistle; the dogs barked with even more noise and unanimity.  Then a dog must have bitten Rothschild, as a desperate, sickly scream was heard.

Yakov went for a walk on the grazing ground, then wandered on at random in the outskirts of the town, while the street boys shouted: 

“Here’s Bronze!  Here’s Bronze!”

He came to the river, where the curlews floated in the air uttering shrill cries and the ducks quacked.  The sun was blazing hot, and there was a glitter from the water, so that it hurt the eyes to look at it.  Yakov walked by a path along the bank and saw a plump, rosy-cheeked lady come out of the bathing-shed, and thought about her:  “Ugh! you otter!”

Not far from the bathing-shed boys were catching crayfish with bits of meat; seeing him, they began shouting spitefully, “Bronze!  Bronze!” And then he saw an old spreading willow-tree with a big hollow in it, and a crow’s nest on it. . . .  And suddenly there rose up vividly in Yakov’s memory a baby with flaxen hair, and the willow-tree Marfa had spoken of.  Why, that is it, the same willow-tree —­green, still, and sorrowful. . . .  How old it has grown, poor thing!

He sat down under it and began to recall the past.  On the other bank, where now there was the water meadow, in those days there stood a big birchwood, and yonder on the bare hillside that could be seen on the horizon an old, old pine forest used to be a bluish patch in the distance.  Big boats used to sail on the river.  But now it was all smooth and unruffled, and on the other bank there stood now only one birch-tree, youthful and slender like a young lady, and there was nothing on the river but ducks and geese, and it didn’t look as though there had ever been boats on it.  It seemed as though even the geese were fewer than of old.  Yakov shut his eyes, and in his imagination huge flocks of white geese soared, meeting one another.