“I play so that either the head is smashed to pieces, or the wall broken in half,” said Foma, hotly, and struck the table with his fist. “Haven’t you recovered from your drunkenness yet?” asked Mayakin with a smile. Foma seated himself more firmly in his chair, and, his face distorted with wrathful agitation, he said: “Godfather, you are a sensible man. I respect you for your common sense.” “Thank you, my son!” and Mayakin bowed, rising slightly, and leaning his hands against the table. “Don’t mention it. I want to tell you that I am no longer twenty. I am not a child any longer.” “Of course not!” assented Mayakin. “You’ve lived a good while, that goes without saying! If a mosquito had lived as long it might have grown as big as a hen.” “Stop your joking!” Foma warned him, and he did it so calmly that Mayakin started back, and the wrinkles on his face quivered with alarm. “What did you come here for?” asked Foma. “Ah! you’ve done some nasty work here. So I want to find out whether there’s much damage in it! You see, I am a relative of yours. And then, I am the only one you have.” “You are troubling yourself in vain. 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. Certain images sprang up in his mind, and, watching their shiftings, he muttered incoherently: “Here, this is better than anything! Take everything, and be done with it! And--as for me--I shall be free to go anywhere in the wide world! I cannot live like this. I feel as though weights were hanging on me, as though I were all bound. There--I must not go, this I must not do. I want to live in freedom, that I may know everything myself. I shall search life for myself. For, otherwise, what am I? A prisoner! Be kind, take everything. The devil take it all! Give me freedom, pray! What kind of a merchant am I? I do not like anything. And so--I would forsake men--everything. I would find a place for myself, I would find some kind of work, and would work. By God! Father! set me at liberty! For now, you see, I am drinking. I’m entangled with that woman.”