“Lise, Lise,” he thought, “and with her ce Maurice.… Strange people.… But what was the strange fire, and what were they talking about, and who were murdered? I fancy Nastasya has not found out yet and is still waiting for me with my coffee … cards? Did I really lose men at cards? H’m! Among us in Russia in the times of serfdom, so called.… My God, yes—Fedka!”
He started all over with terror and looked about him. “What if that Fedka is in hiding somewhere behind the bushes? They say he has a regular band of robbers here on the high road. Oh, mercy, I … I’ll tell him the whole truth then, that I was to blame … and that I’ve been miserable about him for ten years. More miserable than he was as a soldier, and … I’ll give him my purse. H’m! J’ai en tout quarante roubles; il prendra les roubles et il me tuera tout de même.”
In his panic he for some reason shut up the umbrella and laid it down beside him. A cart came into sight on the high road in the distance coming from the town.
“Grace à Dieu, that’s a cart and it’s coming at a walking pace; that can’t be dangerous. The wretched little horses here … I always said that breed … It was Pyotr Ilyitch though, he talked at the club about horse-breeding and I trumped him, et puis … but what’s that behind?… I believe there’s a woman in the cart. A peasant and a woman, cela commence à être rassurant. The woman behind and the man in front— c’est très rassurant. There’s a cow behind the cart tied by the horns, c’est rassurant au plus haut degré.”
The cart reached him; it was a fairly solid peasant cart. The woman was sitting on a tightly stuffed sack and the man on the front of the cart with his legs hanging over towards Stepan Trofimovitch. A red cow was, in fact, shambling behind, tied by the horns to the cart. The man and the woman gazed open-eyed at Stepan Trofimovitch, and Stepan Trofimovitch gazed back at them with equal wonder, but after he had let them pass twenty paces, he got up hurriedly all of a sudden and walked after them. In the proximity of the cart it was natural that he should feel safer, but when he had overtaken it he became oblivious of everything again and sank back into his disconnected thoughts and fancies. He stepped along with no suspicion, of course, that for the two peasants he was at that instant the most mysterious and interesting object that one could meet on the high road.
“What sort may you be, pray, if it’s not uncivil to ask?” the woman could not resist asking at last when Stepan Trofimovitch glanced absent-mindedly at her. She was a woman of about seven and twenty, sturdily built, with black eyebrows, rosy cheeks, and a friendly smile on her red lips, between which gleamed white even teeth.
“You … you are addressing me?” muttered Stepan Trofimovitch with mournful wonder.
“A merchant, for sure,” the peasant observed confidently. He was a well-grown man of forty with a broad and intelligent face, framed in a reddish beard.
“No, I am not exactly a merchant, I … I … moi c’est autre chose.” Stepan Trofimovitch parried the question somehow, and to be on the safe side he dropped back a little from the cart, so that he was walking on a level with the cow.
“Must be a gentleman,” the man decided, hearing words not Russian, and he gave a tug at the horse.