sfaction--the mushrooms,
womanish, peasantish, prose, derogatory to his dignity.

"We can't go back!" I said. "We have come over ten miles!"

"What's to be done?" sighed Grontovsky. "If you had come not ten
but a hundred thousand miles, if the king even had come from America
or from some other distant land, even then I should think it my
duty . . . sacred, so to say, obligation . . ."

"Does the forest belong to Nadyezhda Lvovna?" asked the prince.

"Yes, Nadyezhda Lvovna . . ."

"Is she at home now?"

"Yes . . . I tell you what, you go to her, it is not more than half
a mile from here; if she gives you a note, then I. . . . I needn't
say! Ha--ha . . . he--he--!"

"By all means," I agreed. "It's much nearer than to go back. . . .
You go to her, Sergey Ivanitch," I said, addressing the prince.
"You know her."

The prince, who had been gazing the whole time at the crushed agaric,
raised his eyes to me, thought a minute, and said:

"I used to know her at one time, but . . . it's rather awkward for
me to go to her. Besides, I am in shabby clothes. . . . You go, you
don't know her. . . . It's more suitable for you to go."

I agreed. We got into our chaise and, followed by Grontovsky's
smiles, drove along the edge of the forest to the manor house. I
was not acquainted with Nadyezhda Lvovna Kandurin, nee Shabelsky.
I had never seen her at close quarters, and knew her only by hearsay.
I knew that she was incredibly wealthy, richer than anyone else in
the province. After the death of her father, Shabelsky, who was a
landowner with no other children, she was left with several estates,
a stud farm, and a lot of money. I had heard that, though she was
only twenty-five or twenty-six, she was ugly, uninteresting, and
as insignificant as anybody, and was only distinguished from the
ordinary ladies of the district by her immense wealth.

It has always seemed to me that wealth is felt, and that the rich
must have special feelings unknown to the poor. Often as I passed
by Nadyezhda Lvovna's big fruit garden, in which stood the large,
heavy house with its windows always curtained, I thought: "What is
she thinking at this moment? Is there happiness behind those blinds?"
and so on. Once I saw her from a distance in a fine light cabriolet,
driving a handsome white horse, and, sinful man that I am, I not
only envied her, but even thought that in her poses, in her movements,
there was something special, not to be found in people