But at this point Akim’s scoffing composure deserted him of a sudden. And, rolling his stupid hawk-like eyes, he abruptly leaped to his feet and began to yell, with the irascibility of an idiot: “What? So I’m chattering nonsense, am I? Have you been in the hospital? Have you? And I have been there! I spent seven days there--and did he give me any white-bread rolls, that doctor of yours? Did he?” “Yes, you’re a fool,” interposed Mitrofan: “white rolls are not given to every sick person: it depends on their disease.” “Ah! It depends on their disease! Well, let him go burst with his disease, devil take him!” shouted Akim. And, casting furious glances about him, he flung his spoon into the “thin gruel” and strode off into the hut. X There, breathing with his whistling breath, he lighted the lamp, and the hut assumed a cosy air. Then he fished out spoons from some niche close under the roof, threw them on the table, and shouted: “Bring on that porridge, can’t you?” The baker rose and stepped over to the kettle. “Pray be our guest,” he said, as he passed Kuzma. But Kuzma found it unpleasant to eat with Akim. He asked for a bit of bread, salted it heavily, and, chewing it with delight, returned to his seat on the bench. It had become completely dark. The pale blue light illuminated the trees more and more extensively, swiftly, and clearly, as if blown into life by the wind, and at each flash of the aurora the foliage, in its death-like green, became for a moment as distinctly visible as in the daytime; then everything was again inundated by blackness as of the tomb. The nightingales had ceased their song--only one, directly above the hut, continued to warble sweetly and powerfully. In the hut, around the lamp, a peaceably ironical conversation was flowing on once more. “They did not even ask who I am, whence I come,” said Kuzma to himself. “What a people, may the devil take it.” And he shouted, jestingly, into the hut: “Akim! You haven’t even asked who I am, and whence I come.” “And why should I want to know?” replied Akim indifferently. “Well, I’m going to ask him about something else,” said the baker’s voice--“how much land he expects to receive from the Duma. What think you, Akimushka? Hey?” “I’m no clever one at interpreting writing,” said Akim. “You can see it better from the dung-heap.” And the baker must have been disconcerted once more: silence ensued, for a minute. “He is referring to us, the likes of himself,” remarked Mitrofan. “I happened to mention that in Rostoff the poor folks--the proletariat, that is to say--save themselves in winter time in the manure--” “They go outside the town,” cut in Akim cheerfully, “and--into the manure with them! They burrow in exactly like the pigs--and there’s no harm done.” “Fool!” Mitrofan snapped him up, and so sternly that Kuzma turned round. “What are you gobbling about? You stupid fool, you rickety bandy-legs! When poverty overtakes you, you’ll burrow too.”