"God be praised that you've come!" he exclaimed with delight. "I am fixed here as sure as a Jew comes to a wedding. _He's_ gone away and doesn't mean to come back! Good Lord! how little room there is here! I've knocked against some teapot or other, and can't move either way. The devil take all these shelves!" He continued his lamentations when I had set him free. "It's always like this; it's a real misfortune, this want of room. But what does it matter to him? He fits in here; though he has to help himself with a stick, he can spin round like a top."
"He" was, of course, the shoemaker, for Maciej's stupidity caused frequent bickerings, which, however, never became serious between them. Maciej's unwieldiness and awkwardness irritated the nervous, agile shoemaker; while, on the other hand, Maciej could not understand the shoemaker's quickness. But this was not their only cause of contention. The shoemaker, a burgher, was to a certain extent a man of position, with a deep sense of his higher rank; he wore a coat, and had needs which Maciej regarded as entirely superfluous--in fact, those of a gentleman. In addition, the shoemaker was the owner of the house, and Maciej's employer.
Apart from all this, however, the antagonism revealed in their mutual relations was not deep-seated, but in reality superficial. The shoemaker grumbled at Maciej, and sometimes made fun of him; but he always did it as if he were on equal terms with him, observing the respect due to a peasant of some standing--that is, he always used the form "you," and not "thou," in addressing him. Maciej usually received the shoemaker's grumbling in silence, but sometimes answered his taunts pretty sharply. Besides their common fate and present equality in the eyes of the law, other weighty reasons had an influence in making bearable the relations between people of different classes in one small room.
In comparison with Maciej, the shoemaker possessed intelligence of which the latter could never even have dreamt. The shoemaker could read, and--what gave him a special charm, and no little authority in Maciej's eyes--he could scrawl the eighteen letters of his Christian and surname, although slowly, and always with considerable difficulty. To Maciej's credit, on the other hand, besides his physical strength--that brute force which impresses even those who are not lame--stood the fact that he took service more from motives of comradeship than of necessity. For he possessed capital of his own, having made several hundred roubles, which were deposited at present at the shoemaker's house. Moreover--the most important thing of all--he was a conscientious and honest man. When, before knowing this, I asked the shoemaker in conversation if he could trust Maciej completely, since he lived alone with him and often left him in the shop, he repeated my question with so much astonishment that I at once realized its thorough inappropriateness. He repeated it, and, not speaking quickly, as usual, but slowly and emphatically, he gave me this answer: "Maciej, sir, is a man--of gold."