Do you know, papa, what I'll tell you?
Either give me full freedom, or take all my business into your own hands.

Take everything! Everything--to the last rouble!" This proposition burst forth from Foma altogether unexpectedly to himself; he had never before thought of anything like it.

But now that he uttered such words to his godfather it suddenly became clear to him that if his godfather were to take from him all his property he would become a perfectly free man, he could go wherever he pleased, do whatever he pleased.

Until this moment he had been bound and enmeshed with something, but he knew not his fetters and was unable to break them, while now they were falling off of themselves so simply, so easily.

Both an alarming and a joyous hope blazed up within his breast, as though he noticed that suddenly light had begun to flash upon his turbid life, that a wide, spacious road lay open now before him.