“Who’s this Avtonomov?” I asked.
“That’s me,—Gennady Avtonomov,” said the preacher with a stern glance at his small companion, who quailed under the glance and dropped his sallow face. His thin hair fell and rose.
“Are you walking for your health, or why?” Avtonomov asked me.
“Because I want to.... Where are you going?”
He looked into the distance and answered:
“To Paris or nearer, to Italy or further....” And, noticing that I did not understand, he added:
“I was joking.... I am wandering aimlessly wherever it suits me. For eleven years——”
He spoke with a faint touch of sadness. Then he quietly exhaled some tobacco smoke and watched the blue clouds melt away in the air. His face had a new expression, a quality I had never noticed before.
“A wasted life, signor! A ruined existence, which deserved a better lot.”
The sadness disappeared and he concluded grandiloquently, with a flourish of his cigarette: