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And in a leonine voice he cries defiantly: "Let the storm rage with greater force and fury!" September 20, 1901. Dedicated to By Maxim Gorky ABOUT sixty years ago, when fortunes of millions had been made on the Volga with fairy-tale rapidity, Ignat Gordyeeff, a young fellow, was working as water-pumper on one of the barges of the wealthy merchant Zayev.
In the refreshment-room of the club, Foma was met by the jovial Ookhtishchev. He stood at the door, and chatted with a certain stout, whiskered man; but, noticing Gordyeeff, he came forward to meet him, saying, with a smile: "How do you do, modest millionaire!" Foma rather liked him for his jolly mood, and was always pleased to meet him.
Amid a heavy cloud of dust an enormous crowd of people, winding like a black ribbon, followed the coffin of Ignat Gordyeeff. Here and there flashed the gold of the priest's robes, and the dull noise of the slow movement of the crowd blended in harmony with the solemn music of the choir, composed of the bishop's choristers.
They did not seem to notice Gordyeeff, although, when Yozhov introduced Foma to them, they shook hands with him and said that they were glad to see him. He lay down under a hazel-bush, and watched them all, feeling himself a stranger in this company, and noticing that even Yozhov seemed to have got away from him deliberately, and was paying but little attention to him.
He felt sad and oppressed at the consciousness of being unable to talk so much and so fluently as all these people, and here he recalled that Luba Mayakina had more than once scoffed at him on this account. Foma did not like Mayakin's daughter, and since he had learned from his father of Mayakin's intention to marry him to Luba, the young Gordyeeff began to shun her.
And doesn't it interest you to read it yourself?" inquired Yozhov, scrutinizing Gordyeeff closely. "I'll read it!" Foma assured him, feeling embarrassed before Yozhov, and that Yozhov was offended by such regard for his writings. "Indeed, it is interesting since it is about myself," he added, smiling kindheartedly at his comrade.
On the Exchange, he noticed, everybody looked at him sneeringly, malevolently, and spoke to him in some peculiar way. One day he heard behind him a low exclamation, full of contempt: "Gordyeeff! Milksop!" He felt that this was said of him, but he did not turn around to see who it was that flung those words at him.
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of that insolence!" "Foma Gordyeeff" is a big book not only is the breadth of Russia in it, but the expanse of life.
Some one in the back rows muttered: "What is he talking about? Ah! From a paper, or by heart?" "Oh, you rascals!" exclaimed Gordyeeff, shaking his head. "What have you made? It is not life that you have made, but a prison. It is not order that you have established, you have forged fetters on man. It is suffocating, it is narrow, there is no room for a living soul to turn. Man is perishing!
They sacrifice days to it; and if it should happen that conscience conquered their souls, they are never wrecked, even in defeat they are just as healthy and strong under its sway as when they lived without conscience. At the age of forty Ignat Gordyeeff was himself the owner of three steamers and ten barges.
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