'But we shouldn't get home to-night!'
'Never mind, we will stay at Kasatsky's.'
'Well, there is a very good hostelry at the Monastery.
I stayed there when I was defending Makhin.'
'No, I shall spend the night at Kasatsky's!'
'Impossible! Even your omnipotence could not accomplish that!'
'Impossible?
Will you bet?'
'All right!
If you spend the night with him, the stake shall be whatever you like.'
'A DISCRETION!'
'But on your side too!'
'Yes, of course.
Let us drive on.'
Vodka was handed to the drivers, and the party got out a box of pies, wine, and sweets for themselves.
The ladies wrapped up in their white dogskins.
The drivers disputed as to whose troyka should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses. The troyka-bells tinkled and the sledge-runners squeaked over the snow.
The sledge swayed hardly at all. The shaft-horse, with his tightly bound tail under his decorated breechband, galloped smoothly and briskly; the smooth road seemed to run rapidly backwards, while the driver dashingly shook the reins. One of the lawyers and the officer sitting opposite talked nonsense to Makovkina's neighbour, but Makovkina herself sat motionless and in thought, tightly wrapped in her fur.
'Always the same and always nasty! The same red shiny faces smelling of wine and cigars! The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things!
And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die.
But I can't.
It bores me.
I want something that would upset it all and turn it upside down.
Suppose it happened to us as to those people—at Saratov was it?—who kept on driving and froze to death....
What would our people do?
How would they behave?
Basely, for certain.
Each for himself.
And I too should act badly.
But I at any rate have beauty.
They all know it.
And how about that monk?
Is it possible that he has become indifferent to it?
No!
That is the one thing they all care for—like that cadet last autumn.
What a fool he was!'
'Ivan Nikolaevich!' she said aloud.
'What are your commands?'
'How old is he?'
'Who?'
'Kasatsky.'
'Over forty, I should think.'
'And does he receive all visitors?'
'Yes, everybody, but not always.'
'Cover up my feet.
Not like that—how clumsy you are!
No! More, more—like that!
But you need not squeeze them!'
So they came to the forest where the cell was.
Makovkina got out of the sledge, and told them to drive on.