IT was Christmas Eve.Marya had long been snoring on the stove;all the paraffin in the little lamp had burnt out, but Fyodor Nilov still sat at work.He would long ago have flung aside his work and gone out into the street, but a customer from Kolokolny Lane, who had a fortnight before ordered some boots, had been in the previous day, had abused him roundly, and had ordered him to finish the boots at once before the morning service.
"It's a convict's life!" Fyodor grumbled as he worked."Some people have been asleep long ago, others are enjoying themselves, while you sit here like some Cain and sew for the devil knows whom...."To save himself from accidentally falling asleep, he kept taking a bottle from under the table and drinking out of it, and after every pull at it he twisted his head and said aloud:
"What is the reason, kindly tell me, that customers enjoy themselves while I am forced to sit and work for them? Because they have money and I am a beggar?"He hated all his customers, especially the one who lived in Kolokolny Lane.He was a gentleman of gloomy appearance, with long hair, a yellow face, blue spectacles, and a husky voice.He had a German name which one could not pronounce.It was impossible to tell what was his calling and what he did.When, a fortnight before, Fyodor had gone to take his measure, he, the customer, was sitting on the floor pounding something in a mortar.Before Fyodor had time to say good-morning the contents of the mortar suddenly flared up and burned with a bright red flame; there was a stink of sulphur and burnt feathers, and the room was filled with a thick pink smoke, so that Fyodor sneezed five times; and as he returned home afterwards, he thought: "Anyone who feared God would not have anything to do with things like that."When there was nothing left in the bottle Fyodor put the boots on the table and sank into thought.He leaned his heavy head on his fist and began thinking of his poverty, of his hard life with no glimmer of light in it.Then he thought of the rich, of their big houses and their carriages, of their hundred-rouble notes....How nice it would be if the houses of these rich men -- the devil flay them! -- were smashed, if their horses died, if their fur coats and sable caps got shabby! How splendid it would be if the rich, little by little, changed into beggars having nothing, and he, a poor shoemaker, were to become rich, and were to lord it over some other poor shoemaker on Christmas Eve.
Dreaming like this, Fyodor suddenly thought of his work, and opened his eyes.
"Here's a go," he thought, looking at the boots."The job has been finished ever so long ago, and I go on sitting here.I must take the boots to the gentleman."He wrapped up the work in a red handkerchief, put on his things, and went out into the street.A fine hard snow was falling, pricking the face as though with needles.It was cold, slippery, dark, the gas-lamps burned dimly, and for some reason there was a smell of paraffin in the street, so that Fyodor coughed and cleared his throat.Rich men were driving to and fro on the road, and every rich man had a ham and a bottle of vodka in his hands.
Rich young ladies peeped at Fyodor out of the carriages and sledges, put out their tongues and shouted, laughing:
"Beggar! Beggar!"
Students, officers, and merchants walked behind Fyodor, jeering at him and crying:
"Drunkard! Drunkard! Infidel cobbler! Soul of a boot-leg!
Beggar!"
All this was insulting, but Fyodor held his tongue and only spat in disgust.But when Kuzma Lebyodkin from Warsaw, a master-bootmaker, met him and said: "I've married a rich woman and I have men working under me, while you are a beggar and have nothing to eat," Fyodor could not refrain from running after him.
He pursued him till he found himself in Kolokolny Lane.His customer lived in the fourth house from the corner on the very top floor.To reach him one had to go through a long, dark courtyard, and then to climb up a very high slipp ery stair-case which tottered under one's feet.When Fyodor went in to him he was sitting on the floor pounding something in a mortar, just as he had been the fortnight before.
"Your honor, I have brought your boots," said Fyodor sullenly.
The customer got up and began trying on the boots in silence.
Desiring to help him, Fyodor went down on one knee and pulled off his old, boot, but at once jumped up and staggered towards the door in horror.The customer had not a foot, but a hoof like a horse's.
"Aha!" thought Fyodor; "here's a go!"
The first thing should have been to cross himself, then to leave everything and run downstairs; but he immediately reflected that he was meeting a devil for the first and probably the last time, and not to take advantage of his services would be foolish.He controlled himself and determined to try his luck.Clasping his hands behind him to avoid making the sign of the cross, he coughed respectfully and began:
