"Je suis malade tout a fait, mais ce n'est pas trop mauvais d'etre malade."
"Would you care to purchase?" a gentle feminine voice asked close by him.
He raised his eyes and to his surprise saw a lady—une dame et elle en avait l'air, somewhat over thirty, very modest in appearance, dressed not like a peasant, in a dark gown with a grey shawl on her shoulders.
There was something very kindly in her face which attracted Stepan Trofimovitch immediately.
She had only just come back to the cottage, where her things had been left on a bench close by the place where Stepan Trofimovitch had seated himself. Among them was a portfolio, at which he remembered he had looked with curiosity on going in, and a pack, not very large, of American leather.
From this pack she took out two nicely bound books with a cross engraved on the cover, and offered them to Stepan Trofimovitch.
"Et... mais je crois que c'est l'Evangile... with the greatest pleasure.... Ah, now I understand.... Vous etes ce qu'on appelle a gospel-woman; I've read more than once.... Half a rouble?"
"Thirty-five kopecks," answered the gospel-woman.
"With the greatest pleasure.
Je n'ai rien contre l'Evangile, and I've been wanting to re-read it for a long time...."
The idea occurred to him at the moment that he had not read the gospel for thirty years at least, and at most had recalled some passages of it, seven years before, when reading Renan's
"Vie de Jesus."
As he had no small change he pulled out his four ten-rouble notes—all that he had.
The woman of the house undertook to get change, and only then he noticed, looking round, that a good many people had come into the cottage, and that they had all been watching him for some time past, and seemed to be talking about him.
They were talking too of the fire in the town, especially the owner of the cart who had only just returned from the town with the cow.
They talked of arson, of the Shpigulin men.
"He said nothing to me about the fire when he brought me along, although he talked of everything," struck Stepan Trofimovitch for some reason.
"Master, Stepan Trofimovitch, sir, is it you I see?
Well, I never should have thought it!...
Don't you know me?" exclaimed a middle-aged man who looked like an old-fashioned house-serf, wearing no beard and dressed in an overcoat with a wide turn-down collar.
Stepan Trofimovitch was alarmed at hearing his own name.
"Excuse me," he muttered, "I don't quite remember you."
"You don't remember me.
I am Anisim, Anisim Ivanov.
I used to be in the service of the late Mr. Gaganov, and many's the time I've seen you, sir, with Varvara Petrovna at the late Avdotya Sergyevna's.
I used to go to you with books from her, and twice I brought you Petersburg sweets from her...."
"Why, yes, I remember you, Anisim," said Stepan Trofimovitch, smiling.
"Do you live here?"
"I live near Spasov, close to the V—— Monastery, in the service of Marta Sergyevna, Avdotya Sergyevna's sister. Perhaps your honour remembers her; she broke her leg falling out of her carriage on her way to a ball.
Now her honour lives near the monastery, and I am in her service. And now as your honour sees, I am on my way to the town to see my kinsfolk."
"Quite so, quite so."
"I felt so pleased when I saw you, you used to be so kind to me," Anisim smiled delightedly.
"But where are you travelling to, sir, all by yourself as it seems.... You've never been a journey alone, I fancy?"
Stepan Trofimovitch looked at him in alarm.
"You are going, maybe, to our parts, to Spasov?"
"Yes, I am going to Spasov.
Il me semble que tout le monde va a Spassof."
"You don't say it's to Fyodor Matveyevitch's?
They will be pleased to see you.
He had such a respect for you in old days; he often speaks of you now."
"Yes, yes, to Fyodor Matveyevitch's."
"To be sure, to be sure.
The peasants here are wondering; they make out they met you, sir, walking on the high road.
They are a foolish lot."
"I... I... Yes, you know, Anisim, I made a wager, you know, like an Englishman, that I would go on foot and I..."
The perspiration came out on his forehead.
"To be sure, to be sure." Anisim listened with merciless curiosity.
But Stepan Trofimovitch could bear it no longer.
He was so disconcerted that he was on the point of getting up and going out of the cottage.
But the samovar was brought in, and at the same moment the gospel-woman, who had been out of the room, returned.