“Some Lopukhin peasants have come here to hire themselves out, so don’t give them more than ten roubles a month. Their place was burned down to ashes last summer, and they are now in dire need--they’ll work for ten roubles.” Sitting on the beams, Foma rocked his whole body to and fro, and out of the darkness, from the river, various human figures appeared silently before him--sailors, stokers, clerks, waiters, half-intoxicated painted women, and tavern-loungers. They floated in the air like shadows; something damp and brackish came from them, and the dark, dense throng moved on slowly, noiselessly and swiftly, like clouds in an autumn sky. The soft splashing of the waves poured into his soul like sadly sighing music. Far away, somewhere on the other bank of the river, burned a wood-pile; embraced by the darkness on all sides, it was at times almost absorbed by it, and in the darkness it trembled, a reddish spot scarcely visible to the eye. But now the fire flamed up again, the darkness receded, and it was evident that the flame was striving upward. And then it sank again. “Oh Lord, Oh Lord!” thought Foma, painfully and bitterly, feeling that grief was oppressing his heart with ever greater power. “Here I am, alone, even as that fire. Only no light comes from me, nothing but fumes and smoke. If I could only meet a wise man! Someone to speak to. It is utterly impossible for me to live alone. I cannot do anything. I wish I might meet a man.” Far away, on the river, two large purple fires appeared, and high above them was a third. A dull noise resounded in the distance, something black was moving toward Foma. “A steamer going up stream,” he thought. “There may be more than a hundred people aboard, and none of them give a single thought to me. They all know whither they are sailing. Every one of them has something that is his own. Every one, I believe, understands what he wants. But what do I want? And who will tell it to me? Where is such a man?” The lights of the steamer were reflected in the river, quivering in it; the illumined water rushed away from it with a dull murmur, and the steamer looked like a huge black fish with fins of fire. A few days elapsed after this painful night, and Foma caroused again. It came about by accident and against his will. He had made up his mind to restrain himself from drinking, and so went to dinner in one of the most expensive hotels in town, hoping to find there none of his familiar drinking-companions, who always selected the cheaper and less respectable places for their drinking bouts. But his calculation proved to be wrong; he at once came into the friendly joyous embrace of the brandy-distiller’s son, who had taken Sasha as mistress. He ran up to Foma, embraced him and burst into merry laughter.