of a different atmosphere. Show that you are a
friend to me, let us go together! Let us go for a jaunt as in the
good old days."

"I feel perfectly well," said Andrey Yefimitch after a moment's
thought. "I can't go away. Allow me to show you my friendship in
some other way."

To go off with no object, without his books, without his Daryushka,
without his beer, to break abruptly through the routine of life,
established for twenty years--the idea for the first minute struck
him as wild and fantastic, but he remembered the conversation at
the Zemstvo committee and the depressing feelings with which he had
returned home, and the thought of a brief absence from the town in
which stupid people looked on him as a madman was pleasant to him.

"And where precisely do you intend to go?" he asked.

"To Moscow, to Petersburg, to Warsaw. . . . I spent the five happiest
years of my life in Warsaw. What a marvellous town! Let us go, my
dear fellow!"

XIII

A week later it was suggested to Andrey Yefimitch that he should
have a rest--that is, send in his resignation--a suggestion he
received with indifference, and a week later still, Mihail Averyanitch
and he were sitting in a posting carriage driving to the nearest
railway station. The days were cool and bright, with a blue sky and
a transparent distance. They were two days driving the hundred and
fifty miles to the railway station, and stayed two nights on the
way. When at the posting station the glasses given them for their
tea had not been properly washed, or the drivers were slow in
harnessing the horses, Mihail Averyanitch would turn crimson, and
quivering all over would shout:

"Hold your tongue! Don't argue!"

And in the carriage he talked without ceasing for a moment, describing
his campaigns in the Caucasus and in Poland. What adventures he had
had, what meetings! He talked loudly and opened his eyes so wide
with wonder that he might well be thought to be lying. Moreover,
as he talked he breathed in Andrey Yefimitch's face and laughed
into his ear. This bothered the doctor and prevented him from
thinking or concentrating his mind.

In the train they travelled, from motives of economy, third-class
in a non-smoking compartment. Half the passengers were decent people.
Mihail Averyanitch soon made friends with everyone, and moving from
one seat to another, kept saying loudly that they ought not to
travel by these appalling lines. It was a regular swindle! A very
dif