If I had been taken into a hospital at that minute, the doctors
would have had to write over my bed: _Fames_, a disease which is
not in the manuals of medicine.

Beside me on the pavement stood my father in a shabby summer overcoat
and a serge cap, from which a bit of white wadding was sticking
out. On his feet he had big heavy goloshes. Afraid, vain man, that
people would see that his feet were bare under his goloshes, he had
drawn the tops of some old boots up round the calves of his legs.

This poor, foolish, queer creature, whom I loved the more warmly
the more ragged and dirty his smart summer overcoat became, had
come to Moscow, five months before, to look for a job as copying-clerk.
For those five months he had been trudging about Moscow looking for
work, and it was only on that day that he had brought himself to
go into the street to beg for alms.

Before us was a big house of three storeys, adorned with a blue
signboard with the word "Restaurant" on it. My head was drooping
feebly backwards and on one side, and I could not help looking
upwards at the lighted windows of the restaurant. Human figures
were flitting about at the windows. I could see the right side of
the orchestrion, two oleographs, hanging lamps . . . . Staring into
one window, I saw a patch of white. The patch was motionless, and
its rectangular outlines stood out sharply against the dark, brown
background. I looked intently and made out of the patch a white
placard on the wall. Something was written on it, but what it was,
I could not see. . .