"What?" he would reply, waking up and smiling confusedly. "I was just standing, looking about me a bit."
"God has arranged everything very well, brother," he would often say. "The sky, the earth, the flowing rivers, the steamboats running. You can get on a boat and go where you like—to Riazan, or to Ribinsk, to Perm, to Astrakhan. I went to Riazan once. It was n't bad—a little town—but very dull, duller than Nijni. Our Nijni is wonderful, gay! And Astrakhan is still duller. There are a lot of Kalmucks there, and I don't like them. I don't like any of those Mordovans, or Kalmucks, Persians, or Germans, or any of the other nations."
He spoke slowly; his words cautiously felt for sympathy in others, and always found it in the bricklayer, Petr.
"Those are not nations, but nomads," said Petr with angry conviction. "They came into the world before Christ and they 'll go out of it before He comes again."
Grigori became animated; he beamed.
"That's it, isn't it? But I love a pure race like the Russians, my brother, with a straight look. I don't like Jews, either, and I cannot understand how they are the people of God. It is wisely arranged, no doubt."
The slater added darkly:
"Wisely—but there is a lot that is superfluous!"
Osip listened to what they said, and then put in, mockingly and caustically:
"There is much that is superfluous, and your conversation belongs to that category. Ekh! you babblers; you want a thrashing, all of you!"