He
was not much changed, but had grown rather yellow in the last two years;
silver threads shone here and there in his curls, and his eyes, still
magnificent, seemed somehow dimmed, fine lines, the traces of bitter and
disquieting emotions, lay about his lips and on his temples. His clothes
were shabby and old, and he had no linen visible anywhere. His best days
were clearly over: as the gardeners say, he had gone to seed.

He began reading the inscriptions on the walls--the ordinary distraction
of weary travellers; suddenly the door creaked and the superintendent
came in.

'There are no horses for Sk----, and there won't be any for a long
time,' he said, 'but here are some ready to go to V----.'

'To V----?' said Rudin. 'Why, that's not on my road at all. I am going
to Penza, and V---- lies, I think, in the direction of Tamboff.'

'What of that? you can get there from Tamboff, and from V---- you won't
be at all out of your road.'

Rudin thought a moment.

'Well, all right,' he said at last, 'tell them to put the horses to. It
is the same to me; I will go to Tamboff.'

The horses were soon ready. Rudin carried his own portmanteau, climbed
into the cart, and took his seat, his head hanging as before. There was
something helpless and pathetically submissive in his bent figure....
And the three horses went off at a slow trot.

EPILOGUE

Some years had passed by.

It was a cold autumn day. A travelling carriage drew up at the steps of
the principal hotel of the government town of C----; a gentleman yawning
and stretching stepped out of it. He was not elderly, but had had time
to acquire that fulness of figure which habitually commands respect. He
went up the staircase to the second story, and stopped at the entrance
to a wide corridor. Seeing no one before him he called out in a loud
voice asking for a room. A door creaked somewhere, and a long waiter
jumped up from behind a low screen, and came forward with a quick flank
movement, an apparition of a glossy back and tucked-up sleeves in
the half-dark corridor. The traveller went into the room and at once
throwing off his cloak and scarf, sat down on the sofa, and with his
fists propped on his knees, he first looked round as though he were
hardly awake yet, and then gave the order to send up his servant. The
hotel waiter made a bow and disappeared. The traveller was no other than
Lezhnyov. He had come from the country to C---- about some conscription
bus