The turner lashed his nag, and without looking at the old woman went on muttering to himself: 

“’Your honor!  It’s true as before God....  Here’s the Cross for you, I set off almost before it was light.  How could I be here in time if the Lord....  The Mother of God... is wroth, and has sent such a snowstorm?  Kindly look for yourself....  Even a first-rate horse could not do it, while mine—­you can see for yourself—­is not a horse but a disgrace.’  And Pavel Ivanitch will frown and shout:  ’We know you!  You always find some excuse!  Especially you, Grishka; I know you of old!  I’ll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!’ And I shall say:  ’Your honor! am I a criminal or a heathen?  My old woman is giving up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I going to run from tavern to tavern!  What an idea, upon my word!  Plague take them, the taverns!’ Then Pavel Ivanitch will order you to be taken into the hospital, and I shall fall at his feet....  ’Pavel Ivanitch!  Your honor, we thank you most humbly!  Forgive us fools and anathemas, don’t be hard on us peasants!  We deserve a good kicking, while you graciously put yourself out and mess your feet in the snow!’ And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as though he would like to hit me, and will say:  ’You’d much better not be swilling vodka, you fool, but taking pity on your old woman instead of falling at my feet.  You want a thrashing!’ ’You are right there—­a thrashing, Pavel Ivanitch, strike me God!  But how can we help bowing down at your feet if you are our benefactor, and a real father to us?  Your honor!  I give you my word,... here as before God,... you may spit in my face if I deceive you:  as soon as my Matryona, this same here, is well again and restored to her natural condition, I’ll make anything for your honor that you would like to order!  A cigarette-case, if you like, of the best birchwood,... balls for croquet, skittles of the most foreign pattern I can turn....  I will make anything for you!  I won’t take a farthing from you.  In Moscow they would charge you four roubles for such a cigarette-case, but I won’t take a farthing.’  The doctor will laugh and say:  ’Oh, all right, all right....  I see!  But it’s a pity you are a drunkard....’  I know how to manage the gentry, old girl.  There isn’t a gentleman I couldn’t talk to.  Only God grant we don’t get off the road.  Oh, how it is blowing!  One’s eyes are full of snow.”

And the turner went on muttering endlessly.  He prattled on mechanically to get a little relief from his depressing feelings.  He had plenty of words on his tongue, but the thoughts and questions in his brain were even more numerous.  Sorrow had come upon the turner unawares, unlooked-for, and unexpected, and now he could not get over it, could not recover himself.  He had lived hitherto in unruffled calm, as though in drunken half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he was suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart.  The careless idler and drunkard found himself quite suddenly in the position of a busy man, weighed down by anxieties and haste, and even struggling with nature.