as usual.  The emigrants had returned, there was no bread; in the huts “some were laughing, some were delirious”; but it all looked so ordinary that one could not believe it really was so.  There were no distracted faces, no voices whining for help, no weeping, nor abuse, but all around was stillness, order, life, children, sledges, dogs with dishevelled tails.  Neither the children nor the peasant we met were troubled; why was I so troubled?

Looking at the smiling peasant, at the boy with the huge mufflers, at the huts, remembering my wife, I realized there was no calamity that could daunt this people; I felt as though there were already a breath of victory in the air.  I felt proud and felt ready to cry out that I was with them too; but the horses were carrying us away from the village into the open country, the snow was whirling, the wind was howling, and I was left alone with my thoughts.  Of the million people working for the peasantry, life itself had cast me out as a useless, incompetent, bad man.  I was a hindrance, a part of the people’s calamity; I was vanquished, cast out, and I was hurrying to the station to go away and hide myself in Petersburg in a hotel in Bolshaya Morskaya.

An hour later we reached the station.  The coachman and a porter with a disc on his breast carried my trunks into the ladies’ room.  My coachman Nikanor, wearing high felt boots and the skirt of his coat tucked up through his belt, all wet with the snow and glad I was going away, gave me a friendly smile and said: 

“A fortunate journey, your Excellency.  God give you luck.”

Every one, by the way, calls me “your Excellency,” though I am only a collegiate councillor and a kammer-junker.  The porter told me the train had not yet left the next station; I had to wait.  I went outside, and with my head heavy from my sleepless night, and so exhausted I could hardly move my legs, I walked aimlessly towards the pump.  There was not a soul anywhere near.

“Why am I going?” I kept asking myself.  “What is there awaiting me there?  The acquaintances from whom I have come away, loneliness, restaurant dinners, noise, the electric light, which makes my eyes ache.  Where am I going, and what am I going for?  What am I going for?”

And it seemed somehow strange to go away without speaking to my wife.  I felt that I was leaving her in uncertainty.  Going away, I ought to have told that she was right, that I really was a bad man.

When I turned away from the pump, I saw in the doorway the station-master, of whom I had twice made complaints to his superiors, turning up the collar of his coat, shrinking from the wind and the snow.  He came up to me, and putting two fingers to the peak of his cap, told me with an expression of helpless confusion, strained respectfulness, and hatred on his face, that the train was twenty minutes late, and asked me would I not like to wait in the warm?

“Thank you,” I answered, “but I am probably not going.  Send word to my coachman to wait; I have not made up my mind.”