They held peculiar conversations, words and gestures for use in the room, and all this was changed outside the room, into the most commonplace and human.

Sometimes, in the room, they all blazed up like a huge woodpile, and Yozhov was the brightest firebrand among them; but the light of this bonfire illuminated but faintly the obscurity of Foma Gordyeeff's soul.
One day Yozhov said to him: "Today we will carouse! Our compositors have formed a union, and they are going to take all the work from the publisher on a contract.

There will be some drinking on this account, and I am invited.

It was I who advised them to do it.

Let us go?
You will give them a good treat." "Very well!" said Foma, to whom it was immaterial with whom he passed the time, which was a burden to him.
In the evening of that day Foma and Yozhov sat in the company of rough-faced people, on the outskirts of a grove, outside the town.
There were twelve compositors there, neatly dressed; they treated Yozhov simply, as a comrade, and this somewhat surprised and embarrassed Foma, in whose eyes Yozhov was after all something of a master or superior to them, while they were really only his servants.