"You are mistaken, signor," Lukyánitch replies to me, and his face assumes a strange expression:--"I am not a house-serf; recognise in me Don Quixote de La Mancha, the famous wandering knight; all my life long I have been seeking my Dulcinea--and I have not been able to find her, and I will not tolerate it, that you shall find yours." "_Passa quei colli_".... rings out again the almost sobbing voice. "Stand aside, signor!"--I shout wrathfully, and am on the point of precipitating myself forward ... but the knight's long spear wounds me in the very heart... I fall dead,.. I lie on my back... I cannot move ... and lo, I see that she is coming with a lamp in her hand, and elevating it with a fine gesture above her head, she peers about her in the gloom, and creeping cautiously up, bends over me... "So this is he, that jester!" she says with a disdainful laugh.--"This is he who wanted to know who I am!" and the hot oil from her lamp drips straight upon my wounded heart... "Psyche!"--I exclaim with an effort, and awake. All night long I slept badly and was afoot before daybreak. Hastily dressing and arming myself, I wended my way straight to the manor. My impatience was so great that the dawn had only just begun to flush the sky when I reached the familiar gate. Round me the larks were singing, the daws were cawing on the birches; but in the house everything was still buried in death-like matutinal slumber. Even the dog was snoring behind the fence. With the anguish of expectation, exasperated almost to the point of wrath, I paced to and fro on the dewy grass, and kept casting incessant glances at the low-roofed and ill-favoured little house which contained within its walls that mysterious being.... Suddenly the wicket-gate creaked faintly, opened, and Lukyánitch made his appearance on the threshold, in some sort of striped kazák coat. His bristling, long-drawn face seemed to me more surly than ever. Gazing at me not without surprise, he was on the point of shutting the wicket again. "My good fellow, my good fellow!"--I cried hastily. "What do you want at such an early hour?"--he returned slowly and dully. "Tell me, please, they say that your mistress has arrived?" Lukyánitch made no reply for a while. "She has arrived..." "Alone?" "With her sister." "Were there not guests with you last night?" "No." And he drew the wicket toward him. "Stay, stay, my dear fellow.... Do me a favour...." Lukyánitch coughed and shivered with cold. "But what is it you want?" "Tell me, please, how old is your mistress?" Lukyánitch darted a suspicious glance at me. "How old is the mistress? I don't know. She must be over forty." "Over forty! And how old is her sister?" "Why, she 's in the neighbourhood of forty." "You don't say so! And is she good-looking?" "Who, the sister?" "Yes, the sister." Lukyánitch grinned. "I don't know; that 's as a person fancies. In my opinion, she is n't comely." "How so?"