Kuz'ma turned up his eye, thought, and said:
“Extraordinary … it's like in a dream or a fog.… I lay upon the grass drunk and dozing. I was not quite asleep.… I only heard somebody was passing, trampling heavily with his feet.… I opened my eyes and saw, as if I was unconscious, or in a dream; a gentleman came up to me, he bends over me and wiped his hands in my skirts.… he wiped them in my poddevka, and then rubbed his hand on my waistcoat.… so.”
“What gentleman was it?”
“I don't know; I only remember it was not a muzhik, but a gentleman.… in gentleman's clothes; but what gentleman it was, what sort of face he had I can't remember at all.”
“What was the colour of his clothes?”
“Who can say! Perhaps it was white, perhaps black.… I only remember it was a gentleman, and that's all I can remember.… Akh, yes, I can remember! When he bent down and wiped his hands he said: ‘Drunken swine!’ ”
“You dreamt this?”
“I don't know … perhaps I dreamt it.… But then where did the blood come from?”
“Was the gentleman you saw like Pëtr Egorych?”
“It appears to me he wasn't … but perhaps it was.… But he would not swear and call people swine.”