It so happened that she glanced into the room just when her
brother was telling her father about the galleys. She stopped as
though petrified, holding a tray in her outstretched hands and
listened to everything her brother said about the punishment
inflicted upon him. She listened, and slowly walked away, without
catching Foma's astonished and sarcastic glance. Absorbed in his
reflections on Taras, slightly offended by the lack of attention
shown him, and by the fact that since the handshake at the
introduction Taras had not given him a single glance, Foma ceased
for awhile to follow the conversation of the Mayakins, and
suddenly he felt that someone seized him by the shoulder. He
trembled and sprang to his feet, almost felling his godfather,
who stood before him with excited face:
"There--look! That is a man! That's what a Mayakin is! They have
seven times boiled him in lye; they have squeezed oil out of him,
and yet he lives! Understand? Without any aid--alone--he made his
way and found his place and--he is proud! That means Mayakin! A
Mayakin means a man who holds his fate in his own hands.
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