Poldik did not in the least perceive whither his horses were fast hastening, and that he might have driven them off any day to the knacker’s yard.
Once, however, an acquaintance gave him a hint about the matter. Going past Poldik he halted and said with slow precision, “They are no longer what they were!”
Poldik himself looked at them and almost started aghast. “They are no longer what they were” said he to himself, and here he began to pity the horses from his heart.
If Poldik had not been Poldik he would have led them home to his own stable, but now he began to consider whether he might not as well take them to the knacker’s. And yet to do so seemed to him like smiting his own self and his own existence.
In the end, he led them to his own stable, ceased to be a scavenger and began business as a stableman. As soon as the news spread that Poldik had again taken to converting unsound horses into sound ones he had visitors from morning till evening, bringing him patients from all quarters, and Poldik received them so long as he had any stall room left. At that time if he had thrown himself energetically into his business, he might have made quite a fortune, and yet Poldik did not feel himself a happy man. It was a business which so completely ran counter to all his previous habits and so changed his step, his gait, and all his modes of life that he
