The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy Chapter 1 Page 7

‘Which you will again make a mess of,’ said the man who lay on the sofa playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen to him.

‘I am sad and yet glad to go,’ he continued. ‘Why I am sad I don’t know.’

And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing that this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy.

At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.

‘Dmitri Andreich! The coachman won’t wait any longer!’ said a young serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf tied round his head. ‘The horses have been standing since twelve, and it’s