“Too-too-too-too!” answered the Jewess.

The consultation ended in the Jewess’s diving with a deep sigh into the chest of drawers, and, unwrapping some sort of green rag there, she took out a big rye cake made in the shape of a heart.

“Take it, dearie,” she said, giving Yegorushka the cake; “you have no mamma now—­no one to give you nice things.”

Yegorushka stuck the cake in his pocket and staggered to the door, as he could not go on breathing the foul, sour air in which the innkeeper and his wife lived.  Going back to the big room, he settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and gave up trying to check his straying thoughts.

As soon as Kuzmitchov had finished counting out the notes he put them back into the bag.  He did not treat them very respectfully and stuffed them into the dirty sack without ceremony, as indifferently as though they had not been money but waste paper.

Father Christopher was talking to Solomon.

“Well, Solomon the Wise!” he said, yawning and making the sign of the cross over his mouth.  “How is business?”

“What sort of business are you talking about?” asked Solomon, and he looked as fiendish, as though it were a hint of some crime on his part.

“Oh, things in general.  What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Solomon repeated, and he shrugged his shoulders.  “The same as everyone else. . . .  You see, I am a menial, I am my brother’s servant; my brother’s the servant of the visitors; the visitors are Varlamov’s servants; and if I had ten millions, Varlamov would be my servant.”

“Why would he be your servant?”

“Why, because there isn’t a gentleman or millionaire who isn’t ready to lick the hand of a scabby Jew for the sake of making a kopeck.  Now, I am a scabby Jew and a beggar.  Everybody looks at me as though I were a dog, but if I had money Varlamov would play the fool before me just as Moisey does before you.”

Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov looked at each other.  Neither of them understood Solomon.  Kuzmitchov looked at him sternly and dryly, and asked: 

“How can you compare yourself with Varlamov, you blockhead?”

“I am not such a fool as to put myself on a level with Varlamov,” answered Solomon, looking sarcastically at the speaker.  “Though Varlamov is a Russian, he is at heart a scabby Jew; money and gain are all he lives for, but I threw my money in the stove!  I don’t want money, or land, or sheep, and there is no need for people to be afraid of me and to take off their hats when I pass.  So I am wiser than your Varlamov and more like a man!”

A little later Yegorushka, half asleep, heard Solomon in a hoarse hollow voice choked with hatred, in hurried stuttering phrases, talking about the Jews.  At first he talked correctly in Russian, then he fell into the tone of a Jewish recitation, and began speaking as he had done at the fair with an exaggerated Jewish accent.