When they reached the posting inn the deacon put on his ecclesiastical dress, and went to the Consistorium; the peasant, meanwhile, went straight into the kitchen, where the dinner was cooking.
On the fire was a huge cauldron filled with pieces of beef, boiling, and emitting clouds of steam; a workman in a cotton shirt was ranging on a shelf steaming wheaten loaves, and a woman was turning a whole leg of veal on the spit, and sucking her fingers between whiles.
The peasant held his breath as he looked.
Meanwhile there came into the kitchen several travelling merchants and well-to-do sledge-drivers in fur coats; they were smoking their pipes and talking about the forthcoming dinner.
At last the dinner was ready; Yeremèi sat down to table with the travellers.
During the dinner (which lasted for three hours) Yeremèi experienced a misty sensation in the head, and occasionally a pain in the stomach; but he continued eating just the same, though he still remembered the deacon.
On rising from table he sighed profoundly, said grace with peculiar fervour, and lay down on a bench, but he could not sleep. He kept thinking of how the deacon would appear before him, and say, “Well, have you had your dinner? How much is it?”...
Yeremèi began to regret that he had not left table directly after the shchi (cabbage soup).
Two hours later the deacon arrived. He called the peasant into the other room and began—
“Well, Yeremèi, it’s time to go home. God be thanked, I have settled my business up all right, and had a bite of something at a friend’s house. You’ve had dinner, I suppose?”