"You, I mean, what sorts are you from, if it's not impolite my asking?" the wench finally could not help herself, when Stepan Trofimovich suddenly glanced at her distractedly. She was a wench of about twenty-seven, sturdy, black-browed, and ruddy, with kindly smiling red lips, behind which her even, white teeth flashed.

"You... you are addressing me?" Stepan Trofimovich muttered in doleful surprise.

"Must be from merchants," the peasant said self-confidently. He was a strapping man of about forty, with a broad, sensible face and a full, reddish beard.

"No, I'm not actually a merchant, I. . . I. . . moi c'est autre chose,"^[clxvi] Stepan Trofimovich parried anyhow, and, just in case, dropped behind a little to the rear of the cart, so that he was now walking next to the cow.

"Must be from gentlefolk," the peasant decided, hearing non-Russian words, and pulled up on the nag.

"So here, to look at you, it's as if you're out for a walk?" the wench began to pry again.

"Is it ... is it me you're asking?"

"There's visiting foreigners come by rail sometimes, you're not from these parts with boots like that..."

"Military-type," the peasant put in, complacently and significantly.

"No, I'm not actually from the military, I..."

"What a curious wench," Stepan Trofimovich thought vexedly, "and how they're studying me... mais, enfin... Strange, in a word, just as if I were guilty before them, yet I'm not guilty of anything before them."

The wench whispered with the peasant.

"No offense, but we could maybe give you a lift, if only it's agreeable."

Stepan Trofimovich suddenly recollected himself.

"Yes, yes, my friends, with great pleasure, because I'm very tired, only how am I to get in?"

"How amazing," he thought to himself, "I've been walking next to this cow for such a long time, and it never occurred to me to ask if I could ride with them ... This 'real life' has something rather characteristic about it..."

The peasant, however, still did not stop his horse.

"And where are you headed for?" he inquired, with some mistrust.

Stepan Trofimovich did not understand at once.

"Khatovo, must be?"

"Khatov? No, not actually to Khatov... And I'm not quite acquainted; I've heard of him, though."

"It's a village, Khatovo, a village, five miles from here."

"A village? C'est charmant, I do believe I've heard..."

Stepan Trofimovich was still walking, and they still did not let him get in. A brilliant surmise flashed in his head.

"You think, perhaps, that I ... I have a passport, and I am a professor, that is, a teacher, if you wish... but a head one. I am a head teacher. Oui, c'est comme ça qu'on peut traduire.^[clxvii]I would very much like to get in, and I'll buy you... I'll buy you a pint for it."

"It'll be fifty kopecks, sir, it's a rough road."

"Or else we'd be getting the bad end," the wench put in.

"Fifty kopecks? Very well, then, fifty kopecks. C'est encore mieux, j'ai en tout quarante roubles, mais . .."^[clxviii]

The peasant stopped, and by general effort Stepan Trofimovich was pulled into the cart and seated next to the woman on the sack. The whirl of thoughts would not leave him. At times he sensed in himself that he was somehow terribly distracted and not thinking at all of what he ought to be thinking of, and he marveled at that. This awareness of a morbid weakness of mind at times became very burdensome and even offensive to him.

"How ... how is it there's a cow behind?" he himself suddenly asked the wench.

"What's with you, mister, never seen one before?" the woman laughed.

"Bought her in town," the peasant intervened. "See, our cattle all dropped dead last spring—the plague. They all died, all, not even half was left, cry as you might."

And again he whipped up his nag, who had gotten stuck in a rut.

"Yes, that happens here in Russia... and generally we Russians... well, yes, it happens," Stepan Trofimovich trailed off.

"If you're a teacher, what do you want in Khatovo? Or maybe you're going farther?"

"I... that is, not actually farther... C'est-à-dire,^[clxix]to a merchant."

"To Spasov, must be?"

"Yes, yes, precisely, to Spasov. It makes no difference, however."

"If you're going to Spasov, and on foot, it'll take you a good week in those pretty boots," the wench laughed.

"Right, right, and it makes no difference, mes amis, no difference at all," Stepan Trofimovich impatiently cut her short.

"Terribly curious folk; the wench speaks better than he does, however, and I notice that since the nineteenth of February^[198] their style has changed somewhat, and ... and what do they care if it's Spasov or not Spasov? Anyhow, I'm paying them, so why are they pestering me?"

"If it's Spasov, then it's by steamer-boat," the peasant would not leave off.

"That's right enough," the wench put in animatedly, "because with horses along the shore you make a twenty-mile detour."

"Thirty."

"You'll just catch the steamer-boat in Ustyevo tomorrow at two o'clock," the woman clinched. But Stepan Trofimovich remained stubbornly silent. The questioners also fell silent. The peasant kept pulling up on the nag; the woman exchanged brief remarks with him from time to time. Stepan Trofimovich dozed off. He was terribly surprised when the woman, laughing, shook him awake and he saw himself in a rather large village at the front door of a cottage with three windows.

"You dozed off, mister?"

"What's that? Where am I? Ah, well! Well ... it makes no difference," Stepan Trofimovich sighed and got out of the cart.

He looked around sadly; the village scene seemed strange to him and in some way terribly alien.

"Ah, the fifty kopecks, I forgot!" he turned to the peasant with a somehow exceedingly hasty gesture; by now he was evidently afraid to part with them.

"Come in, you can pay inside," the peasant invited.

"It's a nice place," the wench encouraged.

Stepan Trofimovich climbed the rickety porch.

"But how is this possible?" he whispered in deep and timorous perplexity, and yet he entered the cottage. "Elle l'a voulu, "^[clxx] something stabbed at his heart, and again he suddenly forgot about everything, even that he had entered the cottage.

It was a bright, rather clean peasant cottage with three windows and two rooms; not really an inn, but a sort of guesthouse, where passing acquaintances stopped out of old habit. Stepan Trofimovich, without embarrassment, walked to the front corner, forgot to give any greetings, sat down, and lapsed into thought. Meanwhile, an extremely pleasant sensation of warmth, after three hours of dampness on the road, suddenly spread through his body. Even the chill that kept running briefly and abruptly down his spine, as always happens with especially nervous people when they are feverish and pass suddenly from cold to warmth, all at once became somehow strangely pleasant to him. He raised his head and the sweet smell of hot pancakes, over which the mistress was busying herself at the stove, tickled his nostrils. Smiling a childlike smile, he leaned towards the mistress and suddenly started prattling:

"What's this now? Is it pancakes? Mais... c'est charmant.”