"How strange it is that I feel nothing at all! It's the first time in my life. Ah, my wife is crying. Well, now you cry, but before, when anything went wrong, you flew into a rage. My little son is crying too. No doubt he will grow up a good-for-nothing fellow--the sons of writers, I have noticed, always do. No doubt that also is in accordance with some law of nature. What an infernal number of such laws there are."
So he lay and thought and thought, and wondered at his composure. He was not accustomed to it.
They started for the cemetery, but as he was being borne along he suddenly felt there were not enough mourners.
"No matter," said he to himself, "though I may not be a very great writer, literature must be respected."
He looked out of the coffin and saw that, as a matter of fact, without counting his relations, only nine people accompanied him, among whom were two beggars and a lamplighter with a ladder over his shoulder.
At this discovery he became quite indignant.
The slight so incensed him that he immediately became resurrected, and, being a small man, jumped unperceived out of his coffin. He ran into a barber's, had his moustache and beard shaved off, and borrowed a black coat with a patch under the armpit, leaving his own coat in its stead. Then he made his face look solemn and aggrieved, and became like a living man. It was impossible to recognise him.
With the curiosity natural to his profession he asked the barber:
"Are you not astonished at this strange incident?"
The latter stroked his moustache condescendingly and replied:
"Well, we live in Russia, and we are used to all kinds of things."
"But then I am a deceased person and suddenly I change my attire?"
"It is the fashion of the times. And in what way are you a deceased person? Only externally! As far as the general run of people goes it would be better if God made them all like you. At the present time living people don't look half so natural."
"Quite in the spirit of the epoch, as you should be. It is Russia--everyone here suffers from one ill or another."
It is well known that barbers are flatterers of the first order and the most obliging people on earth.
He bade him good-bye, and ran to overtake the coffin, moved by a keen desire to show for the last time his reverence for literature. He caught up with the procession and the number of those who accompanied the coffin became ten. The respect for the writer increased correspondingly. Passers-by exclaimed, astonished: