"Other people live, and here am I!"
"Every one has his appointed destiny," resounded the deep voice. "Of one, the fate is heralded by angels with little silver hammers, and of another, by devils with the butt-end of an ax."
This strong, muscular, old man knew everything—the whole life of the town, all the secrets of the merchants, chinovniks, priests, and citizens. He was keensighted as a bird of prey, and with this had some of the qualities of the wolf and fox. I always wanted to make him angry, but he looked at me from afar, almost as if through a fog. He seemed to me to be surrounded by a limitless space. If one went closer to him, one seemed to be falling. I felt in him some affinity to the stoker Shumov.
Although the shopman went into ecstasies over his cleverness, both to his face and behind his back, there were times when, like me, he wanted to provoke or offend the old man.
"You are a deceiver of men," he would say, suddenly looking heatedly into the old man's face.
The latter, smiling lazily, answered:
"Only the Lord lives without deceit, and we live among fools, you see. Can one meet fools, and not deceive them? Of what use would they be, then?"
The shopman lost his temper.
"Not all the peasants are fools. The merchants themselves came from the peasantry!"
"We are not talking about merchants. Fools do not live as rogues do. A fool is like a saint—his brains are asleep."