upon you," is Fomá's : "You bloodsuckers! You live on other people's strength; you work with other people's hands! For all this you shall be made to pay! You shall perish — you shall be called to account for all ! For all — to the last little teardrop !"
Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Fomá questions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in her drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance courtesan's heart. Linbof, whose books contradict one another, cannot help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writers and harlots in dives and boozing-kens. And so, wondering, pondering, perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancing the dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite something, the magic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash of light through the murk and dark, — the rational sanction for existence, in short, — Fomá Gordyéeff goes down to madness and death.
It is not a pretty book, but it is a masterful interrogation of life — not of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays
