elf with this proposition; but
finally he came to the conclusion that he would still have time to do it
after tea, and that he might drink his tea as usual in bed with all the
more reason, because one can think even if one is lying down!

And so he did. After his tea he half sat up in bed, but did not entirely
rise; glancing down at his slippers, he started to put his foot into one
of them, but immediately drew it back into bed again.

As the clock struck half-past nine, Ilya Ilyitch started up.

"What kind of a man am I?" he said aloud in a tone of vexation.
"Conscience only knows. It is time to do something: where there's a
will--Zakhar!" he cried.

In a room which was separated merely by a narrow corridor from Ilya
Ilyitch's library, nothing was heard at first except the growling of the
watch-dog; then the thump of feet springing down from somewhere. It was
Zakhar leaping down from his couch on the stove, where he generally
spent his time immersed in drowsiness.

An elderly man appeared in the room: he was dressed in a gray coat,
through a hole under the armpit of which emerged a part of his shirt; he
also wore a gray waistcoat with brass buttons. His head was as bald as
his knee, and he had enormous reddish side-whiskers already turning
gray--so thick and bushy that they would have sufficed for three
ordinary individuals.

Zakhar would never have taken pains to change in any respect either the
form which God had bestowed on him, or the costume which he wore in the
country. His raiment was made for him in the style which he had brought
with him from his village. His gray coat and waistcoat pleased him, for
the very reason that in his semi-fashionable attire he perceived a
feeble approach to the livery which he had worn in former times when
waiting on his former masters (now at rest), either to church or to
parties; but liveries in his recollections were merely representative of
the dignity of the Oblomof family. There was nothing else to recall to
the old man the comfortable and liberal style of life on the estate in
the depths of the country. The older generation of masters had died, the
family portraits were at home, and in all probability were going to rack
and ruin in the garret; the traditions of the former life and importance
of the house of Oblomof were all extinct, or lived only in the memories
of a few old people still lingering in the country.

Consequently, precious in the eyes of Zakhar was the gra