“That’s it!” said Foma, instructively, pleased that the fellow yielded to him, and not noticing the cross, sarcastic glances. “And he who understands feels that it is necessary to do everlasting work!”
“That is, for God!” explained the contractor, eyeing the peasants, and added, with a devout sigh:
“That’s true. Oh, how true that is!”
And Foma was inspired with the desire to say something correct and important, after which these people might regard him in a different light, for he was displeased with the fact that all, save the light-haired fellow, kept silent and looked at him askance, surlily, with such weary, gloomy eyes.
“It is necessary to do such work,” he said, moving his eyebrows. “Such work that people may say a thousand years hence: ‘This was done by the peasants of Bogorodsk—yes!’”
The light-haired fellow glanced at Foma with astonishment and asked:
“Are we, perhaps, to drink the Volga dry?” Then he sniffed and, nodding his head, announced: “We can’t do that—we should all burst.”
Foma became confused at his words and looked about him; the peasants were smiling morosely, disdainfully, sarcastically. And these smiles stung him like needles. A serious-looking peasant, with a big gray beard, who had not yet opened his mouth up to that time, suddenly opened it now, came closer to Foma and said slowly:
“And even if we were to drink the Volga dry, and eat up that mountain, into the bargain—that too would be forgotten, your Honour. Everything will be forgotten. Life is long. It is not for us to do such deeds as would stand out above everything else. But we can put up scaffoldings—that we can!”
He spoke and sceptically spitting at his feet, indifferently walked off from Foma, and slipped into the crowd, as a wedge into a tree. His words crushed Foma completely; he felt, that the peasants considered him stupid and ridiculous. And in order to save his importance as master in their eyes, to attract again the now exhausted attention of the peasants to himself, he bristled up, comically puffed up his cheeks and blurted out in an impressive voice: