The fact was that the evening before, Oblómof had received from the stárosta (steward) of his estate a letter filled with disagreeable tidings. It is not hard to guess what unpleasant details one's steward may write about: bad harvests, large arrearages, diminution in receipts, and the like. But although his stárosta had written his master almost precisely the same kind of letter the preceding year and the year before that, nevertheless this latest letter came upon him exactly the same, as a disagreeable surprise. Was it not hard?—he was facing the necessity of considering the means of taking some measures! However, it is proper to show how far Ílya Ílyitch was justified in feeling anxiety about his affairs. When he received the first letter of disagreeable tenor from his stárosta some years before, he was already contemplating a plan for a number of changes and improvements in the management of his property. This plan presupposed the introduction of various new economical and protectional measures; but the details of the scheme were still in embryo, and the stárosta's disagreeable letters were annually forthcoming, urging him to activity and really disturbing his peace of mind. Oblómof recognized the necessity of coming to some decision if he were to carry out his plan. As soon as he woke he decided to get up, bathe, and after drinking his tea, to think the matter over carefully, then to write his letters; and in short, to act in this matter as was fitting. But for half an hour he had been still in bed tormenting himself with this proposition; but finally he came to the conclusion that he would still have time to do it after tea, and that he might drink his tea as usual in bed with all the more reason, because one can think even if one is lying down! And so he did. After his tea he half sat up in bed, but did not entirely rise; glancing down at his slippers, he started to put his foot into one of them, but immediately drew it back into bed again. As the clock struck half-past nine, Ílya Ílyitch started up. "What kind of a man am I?" he said aloud in a tone of vexation. "Conscience only knows. It is time to do something: where there's a will—Zakhár!" he cried.[Pg 6540] In a room which was separated merely by a narrow corridor from Ílya Ílyitch's library, nothing was heard at first except the growling of the watch-dog; then the thump of feet springing down from somewhere. It was Zakhár leaping down from his couch on the stove, where he generally spent his time immersed in drowsiness. An elderly man appeared in the room: he was dressed in a gray coat, through a hole under the armpit of which emerged a part of his shirt; he also wore a gray waistcoat with brass buttons. His head was as bald as his knee, and he had enormous reddish side-whiskers already turning gray—so thick and bushy that they would have sufficed for three ordinary individuals.