Would you perhaps go to the cloister?
or have you perhaps a longing to go on the highways ?" Foma listened in silence.

The buzzing noise about him now seemed to move farther away from him.

He pictured himself amid a vast restless crowd of people; without knowing why they bustled about hither and thither, jumped on one another; their eyes were greedily opened wide; they were shouting, cursing, falling, crushing one another, and they were all jostling about on one place.

He felt bad among them because he did not understand what they wanted, because he had no faith in their words, and he felt that they had no faith in themselves, that they understood nothing.

And if one were to tear himself away from their midst to freedom, to the edge of life, and thence behold them--then all would become clear to him.