g since early morning, and we have not succeeded in getting there
yet. You should have sung something.'

'Well, what would you have, little father? The horses, you see
yourself, are overdone... and then the heat; and I can't sing. I'm not
a coachman.... Hullo, you little sheep!' cried the peasant, suddenly
turning to a man coming along in a brown smock and bark shoes
downtrodden at heel. 'Get out of the way!'

'You're a nice driver!' muttered the man after him, and stood still.
'You wretched Muscovite,' he added in a voice full of contempt, shook
his head and limped away.

'What are you up to?' sang out the peasant at intervals, pulling at the
shaft-horse. 'Ah, you devil! Get on!'

The jaded horses dragged themselves at last up to the posting-station.
Rudin crept out of the cart, paid the peasant (who did not bow to
him, and kept shaking the coins in the palm of his hand a long
while--evidently there was too little drink-money) and himself carried
the portmanteau into the posting-station.

A friend of mine who has wandered a great deal about Russia in his time
made the observation that if the pictures hanging on the walls of a
posting-station represent scenes from 'the Prisoner of the Caucasus,'
or Russian generals, you may get horses soon; but if the pictures depict
the life of the well-known gambler George de Germany, the traveller need
not hope to get off quickly; he will have time to admire to the full
the hair _a la cockatoo_, the white open waistcoat, and the exceedingly
short and narrow trousers of the gambler in his youth, and his
exasperated physiognomy, when in his old age he kills his son, waving a
chair above him, in a cottage with a narrow staircase. In the room into
which Rudin walked precisely these pictures were hanging out of
'Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler.' In response to his call the
superintendent appeared, who had just waked up (by the way, did any one
ever see a superintendent who had not just been asleep?), and without
even waiting for Rudin's question, informed him in a sleepy voice that
there were no horses.

'How can you say there are no horses,' said Rudin, 'when you don't even
know where I am going? I came here with village horses.'

'We have no horses for anywhere,' answered the superintendent. 'But
where are you going?'

'To Sk----.'

'We have no horses,' repeated the superintendent, and he went away.

Rudin, vexed, went up to the window and threw his cap on the table.