nor anything.  I am just myself.  ‘What is your name?’ ‘Man.’  ’How old are you?’ I say, ’I do not count my years and cannot count them, because I always was, I always shall be.’  ’Who are your parents?’ ’I have no parents except God and Mother Earth.  God is my father.’  ‘And the Tsar?  Do you recognise the Tsar?’ they say.  I say, ‘Why not?  He is his own Tsar, and I am my own Tsar.’  ‘Where’s the good of talking to him,’ they say, and I say, ’I do not ask you to talk to me.’  And so they begin tormenting me.”

“And where are you going now?” asked Nekhludoff.

“Where God will lead me.  I work when I can find work, and when I can’t I beg.”  The old man noticed that the raft was approaching the bank and stopped, looking round at the bystanders with a look of triumph.

Nekhludoff got out his purse and offered some money to the old man, but he refused, saying: 

“I do not accept this sort of thing—­bread I do accept.”

“Well, then, excuse me.”

“There is nothing to excuse, you have not offended me.  And it is not possible to offend me.”  And the old man put the wallet he had taken off again on his back.  Meanwhile, the post-cart had been landed and the horses harnessed.

“I wonder you should care to talk to him, sir,” said the driver, when Nekhludoff, having tipped the bowing ferryman, got into the cart again.  “He is just a worthless tramp.”

CHAPTER XXII.

NEKHLUDOFF SEES THE GENERAL.

When they got to the top of the hill bank the driver turned to Nekhludoff.

“Which hotel am I to drive to?”

“Which is the best?”

“Nothing could be better than the Siberian, but Dukeoff’s is also good.”

“Drive to whichever you like.”

The driver again seated himself sideways and drove faster.  The town was like all such towns.  The same kind of houses with attic windows and green roofs, the same kind of cathedral, the same kind of shops and stores in the principal street, and even the same kind of policemen.  Only the houses were almost all of them wooden, and the streets were not paved.  In one of the chief streets the driver stopped at the door of an hotel, but there was no room to be had, so he drove to another.  And here Nekhludoff, after two months, found himself once again in surroundings such as he had been accustomed to as far as comfort and cleanliness went.  Though the room he was shown to was simple enough, yet Nekhludoff felt greatly relieved to be there after two months of post-carts, country inns and halting stations.  His first business was to clean himself of the lice which he had never been able to get thoroughly rid of after visiting a halting station.  When he had unpacked he went to the Russian bath, after which he made himself fit to be seen in a town, put on a starched shirt, trousers that had got rather creased along the seams, a frock-coat and an overcoat, and