to wonder whether it were a dream, whether there were not
something more here, whether it were not really an apparition. Removing
the sheet, he looked at the terrible portrait by the light of day. The
eyes were really striking in their liveliness, but he found nothing
particularly terrible about them, though an indescribably unpleasant
feeling lingered in his mind. Nevertheless, he could not quite convince
himself that it was a dream. It struck him that there must have been
some terrible fragment of reality in the vision. It seemed as though
there were something in the old man's very glance and expression which
said that he had been with him that night: his hand still felt the
weight which had so recently lain in it as if some one had but just
snatched it from him. It seemed to him that, if he had only grasped the
roll more firmly, it would have remained in his hand, even after his
awakening.

"My God, if I only had a portion of that money!" he said, breathing
heavily; and in his fancy, all the rolls of coin, with their fascinating
inscription, "1000 ducats," began to pour out of the purse. The rolls
opened, the gold glittered, and was wrapped up again; and he sat
motionless, with his eyes fixed on the empty air, as if he were
incapable of tearing himself from such a sight, like a child who sits
before a plate of sweets, and beholds, with watering mouth, other people
devouring them.

At last there came a knock on the door, which recalled him unpleasantly
to himself. The landlord entered with the constable of the district,
whose presence is even more disagreeable to poor people than is the
presence of a beggar to the rich. The landlord of the little house in
which Tchartkoff lived resembled the other individuals who own houses
anywhere in the Vasilievsky Ostroff, on the St. Petersburg side, or
in the distant regions of Kolomna--individuals whose character is as
difficult to define as the colour of a threadbare surtout. In his youth
he had been a captain and a braggart, a master in the art of flogging,
skilful, foppish, and stupid; but in his old age he combined all these
various qualities into a kind of dim indefiniteness. He was a widower,
already on the retired list, no longer boasted, nor was dandified, nor
quarrelled, but only cared to drink tea and talk all sorts of nonsense
over it. He walked about his room, and arranged the ends of the tallow
candles; called punctually at the end of each month upon his lodgers f