Page:Oblomov (1915 English translation).djvu/19

Rh position could not prove a hindrance to thought.

Therefore he did as he had decided; and when the tea had been consumed he raised himself upon his elbow and arrived within an ace of getting out of bed. In fact, glancing at his slippers, he even began to extend a foot in their direction, but presently withdrew it.

Half-past ten struck, and Oblomov gave himself a shake. "What is the matter?" he said vexedly. "In all conscience 'tis time that I were doing something! Would I could make up my mind to—to——" He broke off with a shout of "Zakhar!" whereupon there entered an elderly man in a grey suit and brass buttons a man who sported beneath a perfectly bald pate a pair of long, bushy, grizzled whiskers that would have sufficed to fit out three ordinary men with beards. His clothes, it is true, were cut according to a country pattern, but he cherished them as a faint reminder of his former livery, as the one surviving token of the dignity of the house of Oblomov. The house of Oblomov was one which had once been wealthy and distinguished, but which, of late years, had undergone impoverishment and diminution, until finally it had become