In consequence of the great number of guests staying in the house, no one had a bedroom to himself. In the small, greenish, damp room to which I was conducted by Alexandr Mihalitch's butler, there was already another guest, quite undressed. On seeing me, he quickly ducked under the bed-clothes, covered himself up to the nose, turned a little on the soft feather-bed, and lay quiet, keeping a sharp look-out from under the round frill of his cotton night-cap. I went up to the other bed (there were only two in the room), undressed, and lay down in the damp sheets. My neighbour turned over in bed.... I wished him good-night.
Half-an-hour went by. In spite of all my efforts, I could not get to sleep: aimless and vague thoughts kept persistently and monotonously dragging one after another on an endless chain, like the buckets of a hydraulic machine.
'You're not asleep, I fancy?' observed my neighbour.
'No, as you see,' I answered. 'And you're not sleepy either, are you?'
'I'm never sleepy.'
'How's that?'
'Oh! I go to sleep--I don't know what for. I lie in bed, and lie in bed, and so get to sleep.'
'Why do you go to bed before you feel sleepy?'
'Why, what would you have me do?'
I made no answer to my neighbour's question.