Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/110

92 debts, and to consider when they would fall due, or when he should be able to pay them.

"Why, I owe Morelle, also, in addition to Chevalier," he suddenly thought, and the whole night in which he had run up such a bill stood before him. It was a carousal with the gipsies, which was given by some visitors from St. Petersburg, Sáshka B——, aid-de-camp, and Prince D——, and that distinguished old gentleman. "What makes those gentlemen so satisfied with themselves?" he thought. "And on what ground do they form a separate circle to which others ought to feel themselves flattered to be admitted? Because they are aids-de-camp? It is really terrible what stupid and mean people they consider others to be! However, I showed them that I did not have the least desire to get better acquainted with them. Still, I think. Manager Andréy would be very much puzzled if he heard me saying 'thou' to such a gentleman as Sáshka B——, colonel and aid-de-camp—And nobody drank as much as I on that evening; I taught the gipsies a new song, and everybody listened. Though I have done many a foolish thing, I am a nice, a very nice young man," he thought.

The morning found Olénin at the third stage. He drank tea, transferred with Vanyúsha's aid the bundles and portmanteaus, and sat down gravely, precisely, and accurately among them, knowing where each thing was,—where the money was and how much of it; where the passport, and the stage permit, and the highway receipt were,—and all that seemed to him so practically arranged that he was happy, and the distant journey presented itself to him as a protracted outing.

During the morning and midday he was lost in arithmetical calculations: how many versts he had behind him; how many were left to the next station; how many to the nearest town; to dinner, to tea, to Stavrópol; and what part of the whole road he had behind him. At the