“How wonderful it is,” he thought to himself, “that I’ve been walking so long beside that cow and it never entered my head to ask them for a lift. This ‘real life’ has something very original about it.”
But the peasant had not, however, pulled up the horse.
“But where are you bound for?” he asked with some mistrustfulness.
Stepan Trofimovitch did not understand him at once.
“To Hatovo, I suppose?”
“Hatov? No, not to Hatov’s exactly … And I don’t know him though I’ve heard of him.”
“The village of Hatovo, the village, seven miles from here.”
“A village? C’est charmant, to be sure I’ve heard of it.…”
Stepan Trofimovitch was still walking, they had not yet taken him into the cart. A guess that was a stroke of genius flashed through his mind.
“You think perhaps that I am … I’ve got a passport and I am a professor, that is, if you like, a teacher … but a head teacher. I am a head teacher. Oui, c’est comme ça qu’on peut traduire. I should be very glad of a lift and I’ll buy you … I’ll buy you a quart of vodka for it.”