lled his landlord.

The tailor came into the room, together with his wife and daughter. He
listened, slightly reeling, to Insarov's instructions, dragged the box
up on to his shoulders, and ran quickly down the staircases, tramping
heavily with his boots.

'Now, after the Russian custom, we must sit down,' observed Insarov.

They all sat down; Bersenyev seated himself on the old sofa, Elena sat
next him; the landlady and her daughter squatted in the doorway. All
were silent; all smiled constrainedly, though no one knew why he was
smiling; each of them wanted to say something at parting, and each
(except, of course, the landlady and her daughter, they were simply
rolling their eyes) felt that at such moments it is only permissible to
utter common-places, that any word of importance, of sense, or even of
deep feeling, would be somehow out of place, almost insincere. Insarov
was the first to get up, and he began crossing himself. 'Farewell, our
little room!' he cried.

Then came kisses, the sounding but cold kisses of leave-taking, good
wishes--half expressed--for the journey, promises to write, the last,
half-smothered words of farewell.

Elena, all in tears, had already taken her seat in the sledge; Insarov
had carefully wrapped her feet up in a rug; Shubin, Bersenyev, the
landlord, his wife, the little daughter, with the inevitable kerchief
on her head, the doorkeeper, a workman in a striped bedgown, were all
standing on the steps, when suddenly a splendid sledge, harnessed with
spirited horses, flew into the courtyard, and from the sledge, shaking
the snow off the collar of his cloak, leapt Nikolai Artemyevitch.

'I am not too late, thank God,' he cried, running up to their sledge.
'Here, Elena, is our last parental benediction,' he said, bending down
under the hood, and taking from his pocket a little holy image, sewn in
a velvet bag, he put it round her neck. She began to sob, and kiss
his hands; and the coachman meantime pulled out of the forepart of the
sledge a half bottle of champagne, and three glasses.

'Come!' said Nikolai Artemyevitch--and his own tears were trickling on
to the beaver collar of his cloak--'we must drink to--good journey--good
wishes----' He began pouring out the champagne: his hands were shaking,
the foam rose over the edge and fell on to the snow. He took one glass,
and gave the other two to Elena and Insarov, who by now was seated
beside hen 'God give you----' began Nikolai Artemyevi