Again the charming seductiveness of sleep-waking enfolded him in its embrace. He pictured to himself a small colony of friends who should come and settle in the villages and farms within a radius of fifteen or twenty versts of his country house. Every day they should visit one another’s houses--whether to dine or to sup or to dance; until everywhere around him he would be able to see only bright faces framed in sunny days--faces which should be ever free of care and wrinkles, and round, and merry, and ruddy, and double-chinned, and of unfailing appetite. In all his neighbourhood there should be constant summertide, constant gaiety, unfailing good fare, the joys of perennial lassitude.... “My God, my God!” he cried in the fullness of his delight: and with that he awoke. Once more to his ears came the cries of hawkers in the courtyard as they vended coal, sand, and potatoes; once more he could hear some one begging for subscriptions to build a church; once more from a neighbouring building which was in course of erection there streamed a babel of workmen’s shouts, mingled with the clatter of tools. “Ah!” he sighed with a sense of pain. “Such is real life! What ugliness there is in the roar of the capital! When shall I attain the life of paradise--the life for which I yearn? Shall I ever see my own fields, my own forests? Would that at this moment I were lying on the grass under a tree, and gazing upwards at the sun through the boughs, and trying to count the birds which come and go over my head!” But what about the plans for improving the estate? And what about the _starosta_ and the flat? Once again these things knocked at his memory. “Yes, yes,” he answered them. “_Seichass_--presently.” With that he rose to a sitting posture on the sofa, lowered his legs to the level of his slippers, and slipped the latter on to his feet; after which he sat still for a little while. At length he attained a wholly erect posture, and remained meditating for a couple of minutes. “Zakhar! Zakhar!” he shouted as he eyed the table and the inkstand. “I want you to, to----” Further he failed to get, but mutely pointed to the inkstand, and then relapsed into thought. The doorbell rang, and a little man with a bald head entered. “Hullo, doctor!” Oblomov exclaimed as he extended one hand towards his guest, and with the other one drew forward a chair. “What chance brings you here?” “The chance that, since all of you decline to be ill, and never send for me, I am forced to come of myself,” replied the doctor jestingly. “But no,” he added, in a more serious tone. “The truth is, I had to visit a neighbour of yours on the upper floor, and thought I might as well take you on the way. How are you?” Oblomov shook his head despondently. “Poorly, doctor,” he said. “I have just been thinking of consulting you. My stomach will scarcely digest anything, there is a pain in the pit of it, and my breath comes with difficulty.”