whatever awaited me there.... I went out of the
station. It was awkward by daylight to return home, where every one was
so glad at my going. I might spend the rest of the day till evening at
some neighbour's, but with whom? With some of them I was on strained
relations, others I did not know at all. I considered and thought of
Ivan Ivanitch.

"We are going to Bragino!" I said to the coachman, getting into the
sledge.

"It's a long way," sighed Nikanor; "it will be twenty miles, or maybe
twenty-five."

"Oh, please, my dear fellow," I said in a tone as though Nikanor had the
right to refuse. "Please let us go!"

Nikanor shook his head doubtfully and said slowly that we really ought
to have put in the shafts, not Circassian, but Peasant or Siskin; and
uncertainly, as though expecting I should change my mind, took the reins
in his gloves, stood up, thought a moment, and then raised his whip.

"A whole series of inconsistent actions..." I thought, screening my face
from the snow. "I must have gone out of my mind. Well, I don't care...."

In one place, on a very high and steep slope, Nikanor carefully held
the horses in to the middle of the descent, but in the middle the horses
suddenly bolted and dashed downhill at a fearful rate; he raised his
elbows and shouted in a wild, frantic voice such as I had never heard
from him before:

"Hey! Let's give the general a drive! If you come to grief he'll buy new
ones, my darlings! Hey! look out! We'll run you down!"

Only now, when the extraordinary pace we were going at took my breath
away, I noticed that he was very drunk. He must have been drinking at
the station. At the bottom of the descent there was the crash of ice; a
piece of dirty frozen snow thrown up from the road hit me a painful blow
in the face.

The runaway horses ran up the hill as rapidly as they had downhill, and
before I had time to shout to Nikanor my sledge was flying along on
the level in an old pine forest, and the tall pines were stretching out
their shaggy white paws to me from all directions.

"I have gone out of my mind, and the coachman's drunk," I thought.
"Good!"

I found Ivan Ivanitch at home. He laughed till he coughed, laid his head
on my breast, and said what he always did say on meeting me:

"You grow younger and younger. I don't know what dye you use for your
hair and your beard; you might give me some of it."

"I've come to return your call, Ivan Ivanitch," I said untruthfully.
"Do