God? And all of a sudden this man comes and reveals it all to me—just think, what that meant to me! I told you only a little of what he said to me—we talked until dawn; he went on and on; but I can recall only the kernel of it, I’ve lost all the shell.…”

He stopped speaking and sniffed the air like an animal:

“Guess it’s going to rain, eh?”

He sniffed again, and then decided contentedly:

“No, it won’t rain, it’s just the night’s dampness. I’ll tell you, friend, all these Frenchmen and inhabitants of other lands, they are people of high intelligence. In the province of Kharkov—or was it Poltava—an Englishman, who managed the estate of a great lord, kept watching me; then he called me into the room one day and said: ‘Here’s a secret parcel, old man; will you take it to such and such a place, and hand it over to such and such a person—can you do it?’ Well—why not? It did not matter to me where I went, and it was about sixty miles to the place indicated. I took the parcel, tied it up with a string, thrust it in my bosom and—off I went. On getting to the place, I begged to be allowed to see the landowner. Of course, they gave it to me in the neck—they beat me up and chased me away. ‘Curse you,’ I thought to myself, ‘may you blow up and burst!’ Well, the wrapper of the parcel must have got damp from my sweat, and came apart—and what do you think I saw peeping through it—money! Big money! Maybe three hundred rubles. I got scared; someone might notice it and steal it at night. What was I to do? There I was, sitting in the field, on the road, under a tree—when a carriage comes up with a gentleman sitting in it. Maybe that’s the man I want—I thought. So I stood on the road waving my staff. The coachman lashed out at me with the whip, but the gentleman told him to stop and even scolded him a bit. Yes, he was the right man. ‘Here is a secret parcel for you,’ I said. ‘Right,’ he replied. ‘Sit down next to me and we’ll drive back.’ He brought me into a luxurious room and asked whether I knew the contents of the parcel. So I told him I thought it was money, as I’d seen it peep through the sweaty paper. ‘And who gave it to you?’ he asked. I couldn’t tell, that would have been against orders. He started shouting and threatening to send me to prison. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘do so, if you think you must.’ He went on threatening, but it did not work. I would not be frightened. Suddenly the door opened—and there on the threshold stood the Englishman roaring with laughter! Now, what did that mean? He’d arrived by rail earlier in the day and had sat waiting: would I come or would I not? They both knew all along when I arrived and saw the servants chase me away; they’d given them the orders to do so, not to beat me, but just to throw me out. It was a joke, don’t you see, to test whether I would deliver the money or not. Well—they seemed pleased that I’d brought it, told me to go and wash, gave me clean clothes and asked me to come and eat with them.…Yes, friend…I must say, we did have a meal! The wine too—you just take a sip of it and you can’t close your mouth afterwards. It burns all your insides—and has such a flavor, too. They gave me so much of it that I parted with it. The next day again I ate with them, and I told them things that surprised them very much. The Englishman got tight, and tried to prove that the Russian people were the most remarkable in the world and that nobody knew what they’d be up to next. He banged his fist on the table, so excited he got. That money they just handed over to me and I took it, although I’ve never been greedy for money—it has no interest for me, that’s all. But I’m fond of buying things, it’s true. One day, for instance, I bought a doll. I was walking along a street and saw a doll in the window: just like a live child, even rolling its eyes, it was. So I bought it. Dragged it about with me for four days—would sit down on the road somewhere, take it out of my sack and look at it. Later on I gave it to a little girl in the village. Her father asked: ‘Did you steal it?’ ‘Yes,’ I said—I was ashamed to own I’d bought it.…”

“Well, and what about the Englishman?”

“They just let me go, that’s all. Shook me by the hand and said they were sorry about the joke, and so on.…

“I must go and sleep now, friend, I’ve got a hard day before me tomorrow.…”

Settling down to sleep, he said: