“Thank you,” I answered, “but I am probably not going. Send word to my coachman to wait; I have not made up my mind.”      

       I walked to and fro on the platform and thought, should I go away or not? When the train came in I decided not to go. At home I had to expect my wife’s amazement and perhaps her mockery, the dismal upper storey and my uneasiness; but, still, at my age that was easier and as it were more homelike than travelling for two days and nights with strangers to Petersburg, where I should be conscious every minute that my life was of no use to any one or to anything, and that it was approaching its end. No, better at home whatever awaited me there.... I went out of the station. It was awkward by daylight to return home, where every one was so glad at my going. I might spend the rest of the day till evening at some neighbour’s, but with whom? With some of them I was on strained relations, others I did not know at all. I considered and thought of Ivan Ivanitch.     

       “We are going to Bragino!” I said to the coachman, getting into the sledge.     

       “It’s a long way,” sighed Nikanor; “it will be twenty miles, or maybe       twenty-five.”      

       “Oh, please, my dear fellow,” I said in a tone as though Nikanor had the right to refuse. “Please let us go!”      

       Nikanor shook his head doubtfully and said slowly that we really ought to have put in the shafts, not Circassian, but Peasant or Siskin; and uncertainly, as though expecting I should change my mind, took the reins in his gloves, stood up, thought a moment, and then raised his whip.     

       “A whole series of inconsistent actions...” I thought, screening my face from the snow. “I must have gone out of my mind. Well, I don’t care....”      

       In one place, on a very high and steep slope, Nikanor carefully held the horses in to the middle of the descent, but in the middle the horses suddenly bolted and dashed downhill at a fearful rate; he raised his elbows and shouted in a wild, frantic voice such as I had never heard from him before:     

       “Hey! Let’s give the general a drive! If you come to grief he’ll buy new ones, my darlings! Hey! look out! We’ll run you down!”      

       

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