Staggering, he, too, moved aside from Foma, and after a few seconds again exclaimed in a sobbing voice:
“My song is done! And nevermore
Shall I disturb their sleep of death,
Oh Lord, Oh Lord, repose my soul!
For it is hopeless in its wounds,
Oh Lord, repose my soul.”
Foma shuddered at the sounds of their gloomy wailing, and he hurried after Yozhov; but before he overtook him the little feuilleton-writer uttered a hysterical shriek, threw himself chest down upon the ground and burst out sobbing plaintively and softly, even as sickly children cry.
“Nikolay!” said Foma, lifting him by the shoulders. “Cease crying; what’s the matter? Oh Lord. Nikolay! Enough, aren’t you ashamed?”
But Yozhov was not ashamed; he struggled on the ground, like a fish just taken from the water, and when Foma had lifted him to his feet, he pressed close to Foma’s breast, clasping his sides with his thin arms, and kept on sobbing.
“Well, that’s enough!” said Foma, with his teeth tightly clenched. “Enough, dear.”
And agitated by the suffering of the man who was wounded by the narrowness of life, filled with wrath on his account, he turned his face toward the gloom where the lights of the town were glimmering, and, in an outburst of wrathful grief, roared in a deep, loud voice:
“A-a-ana-thema! Be cursed! Just wait. You, too, shall choke! Be cursed!”