Madame. "However——was it Syomenov?"
And she counted one by one on her fingers several surnames: "Smirnov, Antonov, Nikiphorov;" and then without the surname: "The bald man, in the civil service, the post office I think; the one with the light brown hair; the one quite grey." And none of them were the one after whom Petrov was inquiring—though they might have been. And so he was not discovered.
This year nothing particular happened in the life of Petrov, except that his eyesight deteriorated and he had to take to glasses. At night, when the weather was fine, he went walking, and chose the quiet, deserted bye-streets for his peregrinations. But even there people were to be met, whom he had never seen before, and never would see again; and the houses towered on either side in a dull wall, and inside they were full of persons utterly unknown to him, who slept, and talked and quarrelled: some one was dying behind those walls, and close to him a fresh human being was coming into the world, to be lost for a time in its ever-moving infinity, and then to die for ever. In order to console himself, Petrov would count over all his acquaintances; and their neighbourly familiar faces were like a wall which separated him from infinity. He endeavoured to remember all; the porters, shop-keeper, cabmen that he knew, also passers-by whom he casually remembered; and at first he seemed to know very many people, but when he began to count
