"No. I can't contain myself, I'm so hot-tempered. How can a fellow help it!"
"I love, I accuse, and I punish—have you forgotten? And then again, 'Judge not that ye be not judged,' and the words of King David—have you forgotten?"
Ilya listened to the quarrelling, the song and the laughter for a long time, but all fell alike on his soul and roused no familiar images. Before him in the darkness swam the lean face of the police officer who had so hurt him, with a big hooked nose, greenish, evil, twinkling eyes, and a quivering red moustache. He stared at the face and clenched his teeth harder. But behind the wall the song rose louder as the singers were carried away and let their voices ring out louder and more freely. The warm, melancholy notes found a way to Ilya's heart, and melted the icy lump of rage and bitterness that lay there.
"I wandered on so bravely," sang the high voice, "From mountain land to sea," went on the second, and then joined again:
"Siberia I have traversed
To seek the pathway home."
Ilya sighed and began to attend to the sad words of the song. They stood out against the tumult of the tap room like little stars in a cloudy sky. The clouds hurry on and the stars alternately shine out and vanish.
"My tongue was tortured with hunger,
My limbs were stiffened with frost."
"Sing away, nightingales!" a voice shouted encouragingly.
"They're singing so beautifully," thought Ilya, "that it catches hold of one's heart, and presently they'll get drunk and fight most likely; man never holds on to the good very long."
"Ah! cruel, cruel fate," lamented the tenor, and the bass, deep and powerful, intoned: