wrathfully. 'I'm twenty-six, I know what I'm about, I'm free to do what I
like! I suffer no one ... Give me the money for the journey, pack my box
with my clothes and linen ... and don't torture me! I'll be back in a week,
Platosha,' he added, in a somewhat softer tone.

Platosha got up, sighing and groaning, and, without further protest,
crawled to her room. Yasha had alarmed her. 'I've no head on my shoulders,'
she told the cook, who was helping her to pack Yasha's things; 'no head at
all, but a hive full of bees all a-buzz and a-hum! He's going off to Kazan,
my good soul, to Ka-a-zan!' The cook, who had observed their dvornik the
previous evening talking for a long time with a police officer, would have
liked to inform her mistress of this circumstance, but did not dare, and
only reflected, 'To Kazan! if only it's nowhere farther still!' Platonida
Ivanovna was so upset that she did not even utter her usual prayer. 'In
such a calamity the Lord God Himself cannot aid us!'

The same day Aratov set off for Kazan.


XII

He had no sooner reached that town and taken a room in a hotel than he
rushed off to find out the house of the widow Milovidov. During the whole
journey he had been in a sort of benumbed condition, which had not,
however, prevented him from taking all the necessary steps, changing at
Nizhni-Novgorod from the railway to the steamer, getting his meals at the
stations etc., etc. He was convinced as before that _there_ everything
would be solved; and therefore he drove away every sort of memory and
reflection, confining himself to one thing, the mental rehearsal of the
_speech_, in which he would lay before the family of Clara Militch the real