They sat in silence about a minute, concealing their anger at him, bending over the plates and attempting to hide from him their fright and embarrassment.

Foma measured them with a self-satisfied look, and gratified by their slavish submissiveness, said boastfully: "Ah! You've grown dumb now, that's the way! I am strict! I--" "You sluggard!" came some one's calm, loud exclamation.
"Wha-at ?" roared Foma, jumping up from his chair.

"Who said that ?" Then a certain, strange, shabby-looking man arose at the end of the table; he was tall, in a long frock-coat, with a heap of grayish hair on his large head.

His hair was stiff, standing out in all directions in thick locks, his face was yellow, unshaven, with a long, crooked nose.
To Foma it seemed that he resembled a swab with which the steamer decks are washed, and this amused the half-intoxicated fellow.
"How fine!" said he, sarcastically.

"What are you snarling at, eh?
Do you know who I am ?" With the gesture of a tragic actor the man stretched out to Foma his hand, with its long, pliant fingers like those of a juggler, and he said in a deep hoarse basso: "You are the rotten disease of your father, who, though he was a plunderer, was nevertheless a worthy man in comparison with you." Because of the unexpectedness of this, and because of his wrath, Foma's heart shrank.