“There was a man in the land of Uz,” began Mayakin, in a hoarse voice, and Foma, sitting beside Luba on the lounge in the corner of the room, knew beforehand that soon his godfather would become silent and pat his bald head with his hand. He sat and, listening, pictured to himself this man from the land of Uz. The man was tall and bare, his eyes were enormously large, like those of the image of the Saviour, and his voice was like a big brass trumpet on which the soldiers played in the camps. The man was constantly growing bigger and bigger; and, reaching the sky, he thrust his dark hands into the clouds, and, tearing them asunder, cried out in a terrible voice: “Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?” Dread fell on Foma, and he trembled, slumber fled from his eyes, he heard the voice of his godfather, who said, with a light smile, now and then pinching his beard: “See how audacious he was!” The boy knew that his godfather spoke of the man from the land of Uz, and the godfather’s smile soothed the child. So the man would not break the sky; he would not rend it asunder with his terrible arms. And then Foma sees the man again--he sits on the ground, “his flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust, his skin is broken.” But now he is small and wretched, he is like a beggar at the church porch. Here he says: “What is man, that he should be clean? And he which is born of woman, that he should be righteous?” [These words attributed by Mayakin to Job are from Eliphaz the Temanite’s reply--Translator’s Note.] “He says this to God,” explained Mayakin, inspired. “How, says he, can I be righteous, since I am made of flesh? That’s a question asked of God. How is that?” And the reader, triumphantly and interrogatively looks around at his listeners. “He merited it, the righteous man,” they replied with a sigh. Yakov Mayakin eyes them with a smile, and says: “Fools! You better put the children to sleep.” Ignat visited the Mayakins every day, brought playthings for his son, caught him up into his arms and hugged him, but sometimes dissatisfied he said to him with ill-concealed uneasiness: “Why are you such a bugbear? Oh! Why do you laugh so little?” And he would complain to the lad’s godfather: “I am afraid that he may turn out to be like his mother. His eyes are cheerless.” “You disturb yourself rather too soon,” Mayakin smilingly replied. He, too, loved his godson, and when Ignat announced to him one day that he would take Foma to his own house, Mayakin was very much grieved. “Leave him here,” he begged. “See, the child is used to us; there! he’s crying.”