He had just awakened from sleep, and lying on the floor, on a bed of fresh hay, in the middle of the hut, he gazed gloomily out of the window at the sky, which was covered with gray, scattered clouds.
The wind was tearing them asunder and driving them somewhere; heavy and weary, one overtaking another, they were passing across the sky in an enormous flock.

Now forming a solid mass, now breaking into fragments, now falling low over the earth, in silent confusion, now again rising upward, one swallowed by another.
Without moving his head, which was heavy from intoxication, Foma looked long at the clouds and finally began to feel as though silent clouds were also passing through his breast,--passing, breathing a damp coldness upon his heart and oppressing him.

There was something impotent in the motion of the clouds across the sky.

And he felt the same within him.

Without thinking, he pictured to himself all he had gone through during the past months.