It looked as though he was madly tearing the chains which he himself had forged and carried, and was not strong enough to tear them.

Excited and very dirty, his face swollen from drunkenness and sleeplessness, his eyes wandering madly, and roaring in a hoarse voice, he tramped about the town from one tavern to another, threw away money without counting it, cried and danced to the sad tunes of the folk songs, or fought, but found no rest anywhere--in anything.
It happened one day that a degraded priest, a short, stout little bald-headed man in a torn cassock, chanced on Ignat, and stuck to him, just as a piece of mud will stick to a shoe.

An impersonal, deformed and nasty creature, he played the part of a buffoon: they smeared his bald head with mustard, made him go upon all-fours, drink mixtures of different brandies and dance comical dances; he did all this in silence, an idiotic smile on his wrinkled face, and having done what he was told to do, he invariably said, outstretching his hand with his palm upward: "Give me a rouble." They laughed at him and sometimes gave him twenty kopeiks, sometimes gave him nothing, but it sometimes happened that they threw him a ten-rouble bill and even more.
"You abominable fellow," cried Ignat to him one day.

"Say, who are you ?" The priest was frightened by the call, and bowing low to Ignat, was silent.
"Who?
Speak!" roared Ignat.
"I am a man--to be abused," answered the priest, and the company burst out laughing at his words.
"Are you a rascal ?" asked Ignat, sternly.
"A rascal?
Because of need and the weakness of my soul ?" "Come here!" Ignat called him.

"Come and sit down by my side." Trembling with fear, the priest walked up to the intoxicated merchant with timid steps and remained standing opposite him.
"Sit down beside me!" said Ignat, taking the frightened priest by the hand and seating him next to himself.