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Having arranged a pompous funeral, Ignat christened his son, named him Foma, and unwillingly gave his boy into the family of the godfather, his old friend Mayakin, whose wife, too, had given birth to a child not long before. The death of his wife had sown many gray hairs in Ignat's dark beard, but in the stern glitter of his eyes appeared a new expression, gentle, clear and mild.
But in all the moods of Ignat's life there was one passionate desire that never left him the desire to have a son; and the older he grew the greater was this desire. Very often such conversation as this took place between him and his wife.
On the Volga he was respected as a rich and clever man, but was nicknamed "Frantic," because his life did not flow along a straight channel, like that of other people of his kind, but now and again, boiling up turbulently, ran out of its rut, away from gain the prime aim of his existence. It looked as though there were three Gordyeeffs in him, or as though there were three souls in Ignat's body.
The company, stupefied for a moment by Ignat's stern voice, laughed again so that the panes rattled in the tavern windows. "I'll give you a hundred roubles. Spit!" And the priest crept over the floor and sobbed for fear, or for happiness, to hear that this man was begging him to do something degrading to himself.
In reply to his father's questions Foma told him of the conversation between the pilot and the machinist. Ignat's face became gloomy, and his eyes began to flash angrily. "That's how it is," ejaculated Ignat, shaking his head. "Well, you don't you listen to them. They are not your equals; don't have so much to do with them. You are their master, they are your servants, understand that.
It sounded like the firing of a gun." "Won't you have some cognac in your tea?" Foma suggested. "It is good enough without it." They became silent. A flight of finches winged past over the garden, scattering a provokingly cheerful twittering in the air. And again the ripe beauty of the garden was bathed in solemn silence. The fright was still in Ignat's eyes.
She was tormented by hunger, she thought with what greediness she would eat a lamb, and these thoughts made her teeth snap, and her eyes glitter in the darkness like two sparks of light. Ignat's hut, his barn, cattle-stall, and well were surrounded by high snowdrifts. All was still. Arapka was, most likely, asleep in the barn.
He feared his father and respected him. Ignat's enormous size, his harsh, trumpet-like voice, his bearded face, his gray-haired head, his powerful, long arms and his flashing eyes all these gave to Ignat the resemblance of the fairy-tale robbers.
But now Mayakin seized him by the hand and drew him up to himself. "There, your Excellency, this is my godson, Foma, the late Ignat's only son." "Ah!" said the governor in his basso, "I'm very pleased.
Life was tugging him from all sides, giving him no chance to be concentrated in thinking of and grieving for his father, and on the fortieth day after Ignat's death Foma, attired in holiday clothes, with a pleasant feeling in his heart, went to the ceremony of the corner-stone laying of the lodging-asylum.
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