I spun around in my perplexity like a top, and always faster, so that the cloud storm roared in my ears. The whistle blew in the factory. At first it was thin and plaintive, then it became louder and masterful. The morning looked out sleepily from the mountain and the night hurried below, taking the thin veil off the trees quietly, folding it up and hiding it in the hollows and the pits. The robbed earth stood out clear to the eye. Everything was eaten out and plundered, as if some bold giant had played in this hollow, tearing out strips of wood and giving severe wounds to the earth. The factory was sunk in this basin, dirty, oily, covered with smoke and puffing. Dark people dragged themselves to it from all sides and it swallowed them up, one by one. "Creators of God," I thought to myself. "What have they created?" The uncle came out into the court disheveled, stretching himself, yawning, cracking his joints, and smiling at me. "Ah," he cried, "you are up!" Then he asked me kindly, "Or perhaps you did not go to bed at all? Well, it does not matter. You will sleep during the day. Come, let us drink tea." At tea he said to me: "There were nights when I, too, did not sleep, brother. There was a time when I could have beaten every one I met. Even before I was a soldier my soul was troubled, but in the service they made me deaf. An officer gave me a blow on the ear. My right ear is deaf. There was one _feldscher_ who helped me, thanks to--" It was evident he wanted to say God, but he stopped, stroked his beard and smiled. He seemed to me childish and there was something childish in his eyes. They were so simple and credulous. "He was a very good man. He looked at me. 'What is the matter?' he asked. 'Is this human life?' I answered. 'True,' he said, 'everything ought to be changed. Peter Vasilief, let me teach you political economy.' And he began. At first I did not understand anything. But suddenly I understood the daily and eternal baseness in which we lived. Then I nearly went out of my head with joy. 'Oh, you villains!' I cried. That is the way science always suddenly unfolds itself. At first you only hear new words and then there comes a moment when everything unites and comes out into the light and that moment is the true birth of man. Marvelous!" His face became happy and his eyes smiled softly. He nodded his shorn head and said: "That is going to happen to you, too." It was pleasant to look at him. The child was strong in him and I envied him. "Thirty-two years of my life I spent like a horse. It was disgraceful. Well, I will make up for it as best I can. Only my mind is not very quick. The mind is like the hands. It needs exercise. My hands are cleverer than my head." I looked at him and thought, how is it that these people are not afraid to speak about everything?