When I lived, many years ago, in Petersburg, every time I chanced to hire a
sledge, I used to get into conversation with the driver.
I was particularly fond of talking to the night drivers, poor peasants from
the country round, who come to the capital with their little ochre-painted
sledges and wretched nags, in the hope of earning food for themselves and
rent for their masters.
So one day I engaged such a sledge-driver.... He was a lad of twenty, tall
and well-made, a splendid fellow with blue eyes and ruddy cheeks; his fair
hair curled in little ringlets under the shabby little patched cap that was
pulled over his eyes. And how had that little torn smock ever been drawn
over those gigantic shoulders!
But the handsome, beardless face of the sledge-driver looked mournful and
downcast.