and set off. Hurrah for freedom! One station after another would
flash by, the air would keep growing colder and keener, then the
birches and the fir-trees, then Kursk, Moscow. . . . In the restaurants
cabbage soup, mutton with kasha, sturgeon, beer, no more Asiaticism,
but Russia, real Russia. The passengers in the train would talk
about trade, new singers, the Franco-Russian _entente_; on all sides
there would be the feeling of keen, cultured, intellectual, eager
life. . . . Hasten on, on! At last Nevsky Prospect, and Great
Morskaya Street, and then Kovensky Place, where he used to live at
one time when he was a student, the dear grey sky, the drizzling
rain, the drenched cabmen. . . .

"Ivan Andreitch!" some one called from the next room. "Are you at
home?"

"I'm here," Laevsky responded. "What do you want?"

"Papers."

Laevsky got up languidly, feeling giddy, walked into the other room,
yawning and shuffling with his slippers. There, at the open window
that looked into the street, stood one of his young fellow-clerks,
laying out some government documents on the window-sill.

"One minute, my dear fellow," Laevsky said softly, and he went to
look for the ink; returning to the window, he signed the papers
without looking at them, and said: "It's hot!"

"Yes. Are you coming to-day?"