“And does the road belong to you, you ox?” howls the huckster.

“And suppose I want to walk here.”

The muscles over Artyom’s cheek-bones swell, and his eyes look like white-hot nails. The huckster takes note of these signs and murmurs:

“The street is not wide enough for you then!”

Artyom goes slowly forward. His victim turns into a public-house, asks for hot water, washes his goods, and five minutes later is heard crying at the top of his voice:

“Liver! Lungs! Hot heart! Come and buy, sailor! Cut you a slice of tongue for five kopecks! Have some of this neck, Aunt! Who wants hot heart? Liver? Lung?”

The indistinct sound of the mingled voices rises and falls in the thick air laden with the odor of rotten stuff, brandy, sweat, fish, tar, and onions. The people pass to and fro on the street, hindering the passage of the vehicles, crying their wares, buying, selling, and laughing. Above them winds a blue strip of sky, which shows dim behind the cloud of dust and soot that rises from the street, where even the shadows of the houses seem damp and saturated with mud.

“Haberdashery! Thread! Needles!” calls the shrill voice of the Jew as he walks behind Artyom, who is an object of even greater terror to him than to the others.

“Pear tarts sweet! Buy and eat!” sings out a little pastry-cook clearly.

“Onions, green onions!” squeaks another peddler.

“Kvass! Kvass!” croaks a hoarse voice belonging to a fat, little old man with a red face, seated in the shade of his barrel.

Another man, known by the curious nickname of the Ragged Bridegroom, is busy selling a shirt, dirty but whole, from his own back, to one of the dockyard workers, shrieking at him in a tone of assurance:

“You blockhead! where would you get such a showpiece as that for twenty kopecks? Why, with that on your back you could go and ask a rich merchant’s widow in marriage! A woman with millions, you devil!”

Suddenly the universal howling is pierced by the sound of a child’s clear, ringing voice:

“For Christ’s sake, give a kopeck to a homeless child who has neither father nor mother.”

The name of Christ sounds strange and alien to the ears of the crowd assembled in the street.

“Artyusha! Come here!” It is the affable voice of a soldier’s grass widow, the buxom Darya Gromova, who sells meat patties. “Where have you been hiding? Have you forgotten us?”

“Has business been good?” Artyom asks her, quietly; and with a touch of his foot he upsets her wares. The yellow, shining patties roll steaming over the stones of the pavement, and Darya, ready to fight, shrieks furiously:

“Impudent wretch! Murderer! How can the earth bear you, you camel of Astrakhan!”

Those around her laugh. They know that Artyom will have no difficulty in obtaining pardon from her. And on he goes again, jostling everybody out of his way, upsetting some, and treading on the toes of others.

And ever as he goes, the warning murmur glides along ahead like a serpent: “Artyom is coming!”