Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com horse, delighted to escape, though he shook his head uneas-
ily, wondering whether he ought not next day to inform his
benefactor Fyodor Pavlovitch of this curious incident, ‘or
he may in an unlucky hour hear of it, be angry, and with-
draw his favour.’
The forester, scratching himself, went back to his room
without a word, and Mitya sat on the bench to ‘catch the
favourable moment,’ as he expressed it. Profound dejection
clung about his soul like a heavy mist. A profound, intense
dejection! He sat thinking, but could reach no conclusion.
The candle burnt dimly, a cricket chirped; it became insuf-
ferably close in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured
the garden, the path behind the garden, the door of his fa-
ther’s house mysteriously opening and Grushenka running
in. He leapt up from the bench.
‘It’s a tragedy!’ he said, grinding his teeth. Mechanical-
ly he went up to the sleeping man and looked in his face.
He was a lean, middle-aged peasant, with a very long face,
flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish beard, wearing a blue
cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket of which
peeped the chain of a silver watch. Mitya looked at his face
with intense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly
hair particularly irritated him.
What was insufferably humiliating was that, after leav-
ing things of such importance and making such sacrifices,
he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should with business of such
urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole fate
depended, while he snored as though there were nothing
the matter, as though he’d dropped from another planet.