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Thus also lived Michael Vlasov, a gloomy, sullen man, with little eyes which looked at everybody from under his thick eyebrows suspiciously, with a mistrustful, evil smile. He was the best locksmith in the factory, and the strongest man in the village.
Somebody's voice was speaking loudly and firmly: "They don't go to meet the bayonets from sheer audacity. Remember that!" "Just look at them. Soldiers advance against them, and they stand before them without fear. Y-yes!" "Think of Pasha Vlasov!" "And how about the Little Russian?" "Hands behind his back and smiling, the devil!" "My dear ones!
"Whom have you here?" Vlasova asked softly. "A son, a student," answered the old woman in a loud, brusque voice. "And you?" "A son, also. A workingman." "What's the name?" "Vlasov." "Never heard of him. How long has he been in prison?" "Seven weeks." "And mine has been in for ten months," said the old woman, with a strange note of pride in her voice which did not escape the notice of the mother.
Directed against the breasts of the people, although not yet touching them, they drove them apart, pushing one man after the other away from the crowd and breaking it up. Behind her the mother heard the trampling noise of those who were running away. Suppressed, excited voices cried: "Disperse, boys!" "Vlasov, run!" "Back, Pavel!" "Drop the banner, Pavel!" Vyesovshchikov said glumly.
She accompanied him to the factory every morning, and every evening she waited for him at the gate. On holidays Vlasov started off on his round of the taverns. He walked in silence, and stared into people's faces as if looking for somebody. His dog trotted after him the whole day long. Returning home drunk he sat down to supper, and gave his dog to eat from his own bowl.
They were questioned in regard to the sentence, as to how the prisoners behaved, who delivered the speeches, and what the speeches were about. All the voices rang with the same eager curiosity, sincere and warm, which aroused the desire to satisfy it. "People! This is the mother of Pavel Vlasov!" somebody shouted, and presently all became silent. "Permit me to shake your hand."
Some turned to Pavel and shouted: "Say, you great lawyer, you, what's to be done now? You talked and talked, but the moment he came it all went up in the air!" "Well, Vlasov, what now?" When the shouts became more insistent, Pavel raised his hand and said: "Comrades, I propose that we quit work until he gives up that kopeck!" Excited voices burst out: "He thinks we're fools!" "We ought to do it!"
It was the name he used for the authorities of the factory, and the police, and it was the epithet with which he addressed his wife: "Look, you dirty vermin, don't you see my clothes are torn?" When Pavel, his son, was a boy of fourteen, Vlasov was one day seized with the desire to pull him by the hair once more. But Pavel grasped a heavy hammer, and said curtly: "Don't touch me!"
The mother saw that all heads were turned in the same direction, toward the blacksmith's wall, where Sizov, Makhotin, Vyalov, and five or six influential, solid workingmen were standing on a high pile of old iron heaped on the red brick paving of the court, and waving their hands. "Vlasov is coming!" somebody shouted. "Vlasov? Bring him along!"
She forced her way into the crowd among people familiar to her, and, as it were, leaned on them. She pressed closely against a tall, lame man with a clean-shaven face. In order to look at her, he had to turn his head stiffly. "What do you want? Who are you?" he asked her. "The mother of Pavel Vlasov," she answered, her knees trembling beneath her, her lower lip involuntarily dropping.
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