After this conversation they separated and went off to bed, not without meditating on each other’s peculiarities.

The affair was really very singular. The next morning, when the horses were brought round for Tchitchikoff, and he sprang into the calash, with almost as much agility as a military man, in a new coat, a white neckcloth and waistcoat, and drove off to pay his respects to the general, Tentyotnikoff was assailed by feelings such as he had not experienced for a long time. His rusty, dreamy thoughtfulness was converted into active disquietude. A nervous emotion suddenly overpowered all the other feelings of this idler, who had hitherto been wholly engrossed in heedless indolence. He now seated himself on the sofa; then he strayed to the window, then picked up a book, then tried to think, but his endeavours were fruitless! Not a thought entered his brain. Then he tried to avoid thinking of anything—vain effort! Fragments of something resembling thought, odds and ends, crept in from everywhere, and clung to his brain. “What a strange state of mind!” he said, and he approached the window, to gaze at the road which cut through the gloomy forest, at the extremity of which the dust raised by the departing calash was still revolving like smoke. But let us abandon Tentyotnikoff, and follow our hero to the general’s.