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Updated: June 10, 2025
'So be, surely, I'... the peasant began hesitatingly in a rather hoarse voice, shaking his thin wisps of hair, and drumming with his fingers on the band of the cap he held in his hands.... 'Surely, I.... 'What's your name? I inquired. The peasant looked down and seemed to think deeply. 'My name? 'Yes; what are you called? 'Why my name 'ull be Filofey.
And everything as motionless, as noiseless, as though in some enchanted realm, in a dream a dream of fairyland.... 'What does it mean? I looked back from under the hood of the coach.... 'Why, we are in the middle of the river!... the bank was thirty paces from us. 'Filofey! I cried. 'What? he answered. 'What, indeed! Upon my word! Where are we? 'In the river. 'I see we're in the river.
'Good luck to you, master! And that was the last we saw of them. The horses dashed on, the cart rumbled up the hill; once more it stood out on the dark line separating the earth from the sky, went down, and vanished. And now the rattle of the wheels, the shouts and tambourines, could not be heard.... There was a death-like silence. Filofey and I could not recover ourselves all at once.
His brothers skipped away on both sides, lashed the trace-horses under the belly, and the coach started, turned out of the gates into the street, the shaggy one tried to turn off towards his own home, but Filofey brought him to reason with a few strokes of the whip, and behold! we were already out of the village, and rolling along a fairly even road, between close-growing bushes of thick hazels.
As we drove by the place where we first heard the rattle of the cart behind us, Filofey, who, having had something to drink at Tula, turned out to be very talkative he even began telling me fairy-tales as he passed the place, suddenly burst out laughing. 'Do you remember, master, how I kept saying to you, "A rattle... a rattle of wheels," I said! He waved his hand several times.
Filofey made him no reply, as though admitting that to be called Filofey was as a fact not very clever of him, and that a man might fairly be reproached for such a name, though really it was the village priest was to blame in the matter for not having done better by him at his christening. At last we agreed, however, on the sum of twenty roubles.
Filofey uttered a faint-hearted 'wo'! The horses instantaneously stopped, as though delighted at the chance of resting! Mercy upon us! the tambourines were simply booming away just behind our backs, the cart was rattling and creaking, the men were whistling, shouting, and singing, the horses were snorting and thumping on the ground with their hoofs.... They had overtaken us!
So we drove on and on.... But now the end of the meadows had been reached, little copses and ploughed fields came into view; a little village flashed with two or three lights on one side it was only four miles now to the main road. I fell asleep. Again I did not wake up of my own accord. This time I was roused by the voice of Filofey. 'Master!... hey, master! I sat up.
Suddenly a sharp whoop was heard; the cart before us, as it were, flew ahead, dashed along, and reaching the bridge, at once stopped stock-still a little on one side of the road. My heart fairly sank like lead. 'Ah, brother Filofey, I said, 'we are going to our death. Forgive me for bringing you to ruin. 'As though it were your fault, master! There's no escaping one's fate!
They heaped the coach up with hay, put the collar off the lame shaft-horse under the seat, in case we might want to fit it on to the horse to be bought at Tula.... Filofey, who had managed to run home and come back in a long, white, loose, ancestral overcoat, a high sugar-loaf cap, and tarred boots, clambered triumphantly up on to the box.
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