Sure enough, the said festival arrived, and again there was talk of the letter. In fact, old Oblomov did in truth get himself ready to write it. He shut himself up in his study, he put on his spectacles, and he sat down to the table. Everything in the house was profoundly quiet, since orders had been issued that the establishment was not to stamp upon the floor, nor, indeed, to make a noise of any kind. “The _barin_ is writing,” was said in much the same tone of respectful awe that might have been used had a dead person been lying in the house. Hardly had old Oblomov inscribed the words “Dear Sir”--slowly and crookedly, and with a shaking hand, and as cautiously, as though he had been engaged in a dangerous task--when there entered to him his wife. “I have searched and searched,” she said, “but can find no recipe. Nevertheless the bedroom wardrobe still remains to be ransacked, so _how_ can you write the letter now?” “It ought to go by the next post,” her husband remarked. “And what will it cost to go?” Old Oblomov produced an ancient calendar. “Forty kopecks,” he said. “What? You are going to throw away _forty kopecks_ on such a trifle?” she exclaimed. “We had far better wait until we are sending other things also to the town. Let the peasants know about it.” “That _might_ be better,” agreed old Oblomov, tapping his pen against the table. With that he replaced the pen in the inkstand, and took off his spectacles. “Yes, it _might_ be better,” he concluded. And to this day no one knows how long Philip Matveitch had to wait for that recipe. Also, there were times when old Oblomov actually took a book in his hands. What book it might be he did not care, for he felt no actual craving to read; he looked upon literature as a mere luxury which could easily be indulged in, or be done without, even as one might have a picture on one’s wall, or one might not--one might go out for an occasional walk, or one might not. Hence, as I say, he was indifferent to the identity of a book, since he looked upon such articles as mere instruments of distraction from _ennui_ and lack of employment. Also, he always adopted towards authors that half-contemptuous attitude which used to be maintained by gentry of the _ancien régime_; for, like many of his day, he considered a writer of books to be a roisterer, a ne’er-do-well, a drunkard, a sort of merry-andrew. Also, he would read aloud items of intelligence from journals three years old--such items as, “It is reported from The Hague that, on returning to the Palace from a short drive, the King gazed at the assembled onlookers through his spectacles,” or “At Vienna such and such an Ambassador has just presented his Letter of Credentials.” Again, there was a day when he read aloud the intelligence that a certain work by a foreign writer had just been translated into Russian.