Now the decision is made: the wolf cub has settled with the artist, and Trotsky has to rack his brains on how to clothe and feed the foundling on four rubles and a ten-kopeck piece. After negotiating credit with the stout landlady, he dresses the boy and takes him to be presented to his uncle, a drunken doctor who drinks bitter with apothecary precision and curses the entire medical fraternity as scoundrels. At the drunken table, amidst jabs and reproaches, they hold a council: should they keep the sullen foster child or just dismiss this whim?