"Why, good gracious, there is nothing there, Yákoff!"
"Thou dost not see him, but I do."
Again I glanced round … again nothing. Suddenly there recurred to my mind the little old man in the forest who had given him the chestnut. "What does he look like?" I said…. "Is he green?"
"No, he is not green, but black."
"Has he horns?"
"No, he is like a man,—only all black."
As Yákoff speaks he displays his teeth in a grin and turns as pale as a corpse, and huddles up to me in terror; and his eyes seem on the point of popping out of his head, and he keeps staring at the corner.
"Why, it is a shadow glimmering faintly," I say. "That is the blackness from a shadow, but thou mistakest it for a man."
"Nothing of the sort!—And I see his eyes: now he is rolling up the whites, now he is raising his hand, he is calling me."
"Yákoff, Yákoff, thou shouldst try to pray; this obsession would disperse. Let God arise and His enemies shall be scattered!"