The men walked off uttering coward abuse.
"Dirty vermin!" he snapped at them, and his eyes gleamed with a smile sharp as an awl.

Then holding his head in an attitude of direct challenge, with a short, thick pipe between his teeth, he walked behind them, and now and then called out: "Well, who wants death ?" No one wanted it.
He spoke little, and "dirty vermin" was his favorite expression.

It was the name he used for the authorities of the factory, and the police, and it was the epithet with which he addressed his wife: "Look, you dirty vermin, don't you see my clothes are torn ?" When Pavel, his son, was a boy of fourteen, Vlasov was one day seized with the desire to pull him by the hair once more.

But Pavel grasped a heavy hammer, and said curtly: "Don't touch me!" "What!" demanded his father, bending over the tall, slender figure of his son like a shadow on a birch tree.
"Enough!" said Pavel.

"I am not going to give myself up any more." And opening his dark eyes wide, he waved the hammer in the air.
His father looked at him, folded his shaggy hands on his back, and, smiling, said: "All right." Then he drew a heavy breath and added: "Ah, you dirty vermin!" Shortly after this he said to his wife: "Don't ask me for money any more.