Lunev was silent; he hated the sight of his uncle's troubled, disappointed face.
"Where on earth did he hide it all?" asked the hunchback thoughtfully and wonderingly. "I thought we had taken the lot; but perhaps Petrusha had been there already, eh?"
"I wish you'd stop talking of it!" said Lunev harshly.
"Yes, it's no good now; what's the good of talking?" agreed Terenti with another deep sigh.
Lunev could not keep his mind off the greed of mankind, and the evil and miserable meanness practised for money. Then he began to think; if he possessed all this money, ten thousand, a hundred thousand then he'd show the world! How they should creep on all fours before him! Carried away with revengeful feelings, he smashed on the table with his fist; at the blow he started, glanced at his uncle, and saw that he was staring with terrified eyes and mouth half open.
"I was thinking of something," he said moodily, and stood up.
"Yes, of course," said his uncle suspiciously, as Ilya passed into the shop he looked searchingly at Terenti, and saw his lips moving silently; he felt the suspicious look behind his back, though he could not see; he had noticed for some time that his uncle followed his every movement and seemed anxious to find out something, or to ask something. But this only made Lunev anxious to avoid all conversation; every day he felt more plainly that his hunchbacked guest troubled the course of his life, and more and more often he asked himself:
"Will it go on much longer?"
It was as though a cancer were gnawing at his soul; life became daily more wearisome, and worst of all was the sense that he had no longer any desire to do anything. Days passed aimlessly, and often his feeling was that he sank slowly, but every hour deeper, into a bottomless abyss. Convinced that mankind had deeply injured him, he concentrated all the strength of his soul on one point—the bitter sense of injury; he stirred the flames by constant brooding and found therein the exculpation for every fault he had himself committed.
Shortly after Terenti's arrival, Tatiana Vlassyevna appeared, after a holiday spent some distance from the town. When she saw the hunchbacked peasant in brown fustian, she pinched her lips together in disgust and asked Ilya: