exactly retiring--retiring was not a word that could be applied to him:
he lived as though he noticed no one about him, and cared for no one.
The Wild Master (that was the nickname they had given him; his real name
was Perevlyesov) enjoyed an immense influence in the whole district; he
was obeyed with eager promptitude, though he had no kind of right to
give orders to anyone, and did not himself evince the slightest
pretension to authority over the people with whom he came into casual
contact He spoke--they obeyed: strength always has an influence of its
own. He scarcely drank at all, had nothing to do with women, and was
passionately fond of singing. There was much that was mysterious about
this man; it seemed as though vast forces sullenly reposed within him,
knowing, as it were, that once roused, once bursting free, they were
bound to crush him and everything they came in contact with; and I am
greatly mistaken if, in this man's life, there had not been some such
outbreak; if it was not owing to the lessons of experience, to a narrow
escape from ruin, that he now kept himself so tightly in hand. What
especially struck me in him was the combination of a sort of inborn
natural ferocity, with an equally inborn generosity--a combination I
have never met in any other man.

And so the booth-keeper stepped forward, and, half shutting his eyes,
began singing in high falsetto. He had a fairly sweet and pleasant
voice, though rather hoarse: he played with his voice like a woodlark,
twisting and turning it in incessant roulades and trills up and down the
scale, continually returning to the highest notes, which he held and
prolonged with special care. Then he would break off, and again suddenly
take up the first motive with a sort of go-ahead daring. His modulations
were at times rather bold, at times rather comical; they would have
given a connoisseur great satisfaction, and have made a German furiously
indignant. He was a Russian _tenore di grazia, tenor leger_. He