Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/83

Rh in his hand the shaft of the carriage, moved it to and fro, and thoughtfully looked at the wheels; another, a fine-looking young lad, clad only in a white shirt with red Bukhara cotton gussets, and wearing a black lambskin cap shaped like a cylindrical buckwheat cake, which he, scratching his blond locks, poised now on one ear, now on the other, put his camel-hair coat on the coachman's box, threw the reins there also and, snapping his plaited whip, looked now at his boots, now at the coachmen who were greasing the calash. One of them, straining himself, was holding a jack; another, bending over the wheel, was carefully greasing the axle and the axle-box, and, not to lose the last bit of grease left on the brush, smeared it on the lower part of the rim.

Variously coloured, weak-kneed post-horses stood at the picket fence and switched the flies off with their tails. Some of them, spreading their shaggy, swollen legs, blinked their eyes and were dozing; others rubbed each other, from ennui, or nibbled at leaves or stalks of rough, dark-green ferns that grew near the veranda. A few greyhounds either breathed heavily, lying in the sun, or walked about in the shade under the carriage and calash, and licked the grease which oozed out of the axles. There was a dusty mist in the air, and the horizon was of grayish olive hue; but there was not a cloud to be seen in the whole sky. A strong westerly wind raised columns of dust from the roads and fields, bent the tops of the tall linden-trees and birches of the garden, and carried far away the falling yellow leaves. I was sitting near the window, and impatiently was waiting for the end of all the preparations.

When all had gathered in the sitting-room near the round table, in order to pass a few minutes together, for the last time, it did not occur to me what a sad moment awaited us. The most trifling thoughts were crossing my brain, I asked myself: which coachman will ride in the