"Did you hear? He says a goddess, yet we Russian people have only one goddess, the Holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary. That's how those curly-headed youngsters speak!"
"Out with him!"
"Silence!"
"No, if you please. If there's liberty, everyone has a right—"
"You see? The curly-headed youngsters walk the streets, beat the people who rise up to maintain the Czar's truth against treachery, while we Russians, the True Orthodox, don't dare even to speak. Is this liberty?"
"They'll fight," said Klimkov, starting to tremble. "Somebody will be killed. I'm going."
"What a peculiar fellow you are! Well, let's go. The devil take them! What are they to you?"
Melnikov flung the money on the table, and moved toward the exit, his head bowed low, as if to conceal his conspicuous face. On the street in the dark and the cold, he began to speak in a subdued voice:
"When I was in prison—it was on account of a certain foreman, who was strangled in our factory—I was hauled up, too. They told me I would get hard labor. Everybody said it, first the coroner, then the gendarmes joined in. I got frightened. I was still young, and I didn't take to the idea of hard labor. I used to cry." He coughed a clapping cough, and slackened his pace. "Once the assistant overseer of the prison, Aleksey Maksimych, a good little old man, came in to me. He loved me. He grieved for me all the time. 'Ah,' says he, 'Liapin,'—my real name is Liapin—'Ah,' says he, 'brother, I'm sorry for you. You are such an unfortunate fellow—'"
Melnikov's speech unfolded itself like a soft band upon which Klimkov quietly let himself down, as upon a narrow path leading down into the darkness, into something terrible and awesomely interesting.