For the first time in his life among these uniformed people, he saw that they were eating and speaking--doing everything better than he, and he felt that between him and Medinskaya, who was seated just opposite him, was a high mountain, not a table.

Beside him sat the secretary of the society of which Foma had been made an honorary member; he was a young court officer, bearing the odd name of Ookhtishchev.

As if to make his name appear more absurd than it really was, he spoke in a loud, ringing tenor, and altogether--plump, short, round-faced and a lively talker--he looked like a brand new bell.
"The very best thing in our society is the patroness; the most reasonable is what we are doing--courting the patroness; the most difficult is to tell the patroness such a compliment as would satisfy her; and the most sensible thing is to admire the patroness silently and hopelessly.

So that in reality, you are a member not of 'the Society of Solicitude,' and so on, but of the Society of Tantaluses, which is composed of persons bent on pleasing Sophya Medinskaya." Foma listened to his chatter, now and then looking at the patroness, who was absorbed in a conversation with the chief of the police; Foma roared in reply to his interlocutor, pretending to be busy eating, and he wished that all this would end the sooner.

He felt that he was wretched, stupid, ridiculous and he was certain that everybody was watching and censuring him.