Page:Revolution and Other Essays.djvu/225

 understand as he labored holily with his wayward godson.

"Why do you brag?" Fomá bursts out upon him. "What have you to brag about? Your son — where is he ? Your daughter — what is she? Ekh, you manager of life! Come, now, you're clever, you know everything — tell me, why do you live? Why do you accumulate money ? Aren't you going to die? Well, what then?" And Mayákin finds himself speechless and without answer, but unshaken and unconvinced.

Receiving by heredity the fierce, bull-like nature of his father plus the passive indomitableness and groping spirit of his mother, Fomá, proud and rebellious, is repelled by the selfish, money-seeking environment into which he is born. Ignát, his father, and Mayákin, the godfather, and all the horde of successful merchants singing the paean of the strong and the praises of merciless, remorseless laissez faire, cannot entice him. Why? he demands. This is a nightmare, this life! It is without significance! What does it all mean? What is there underneath? What is the meaning of that which is underneath "