"
From a distant corner a hoarse voice belonging to a horrible,
nondescript, shaggy being with a black face like the muzzle of a bear
grunted angrily--
"The cursed driver of thieves. What do we want with his gentlemen here?
We are all honest folk in this place."
Razumov, biting his lip till blood came to keep himself from bursting
into imprecations, followed the owner of the den, who, whispering "Come
along, little father," led him into a tiny hole of a place behind
the wooden counter, whence proceeded a sound of splashing. A wet and
bedraggled creature, a sort of sexless and shivering scarecrow, washed
glasses in there, bending over a wooden tub by the light of a tallow
dip.
"Yes, little father," the man in the long caftan said plaintively. He
had a brown, cunning little face, a thin greyish beard. Trying to light
a tin lantern he hugged it to his breast and talked garrulously the
while.
He would show Ziemianitch to the gentleman to prove there were no lies
told. And he would show him drunk. His woman, it seems, ran away from
him last night. "Such a hag she was! Thin! Pfui!" He spat. They were
always running away from that driver of the devil--and he sixty years
old too; could never get used to it. But each heart knows sorrow after
its own kind and Ziemianitch was a born fool all his days.
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