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