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."

I walked to and fro on the platform and thought, should I go away or
not? When the train came in I decided not to go. At home I had to expect
my wife's amazement and perhaps her mockery, the dismal upper storey and
my uneasiness; but, still, at my age that was easier and as it were
more homelike than travelling for two days and nights with strangers to
Petersburg, where I should be conscious every minute that my life was of
no use to any one or to anything, and that it was approaching its end.
No, better at home