awoke, he felt overcome with depression, should he happen to hear Vassika's rasping voice shout aloud from the veranda: "Antipka, harness the piebald, as the young barin has to drive over to the German's!" Yes, then Ilya's heart would tremble, and he would repair sadly to his mother, who would know why he did so, and begin to gild the pill, while secretly sighing to herself at the thought that she was to be parted from the lad for a whole week. Indeed, on such mornings he could scarcely be given enough to eat, and scarcely could a sufficiency of buns and cakes and pies and sweetmeats be made to take with him (the said sufficiency being based upon an assumption that at the German's the pupils fared far from richly).
"One couldn't overeat oneself there," said the Oblomovkans. "For dinner one gets nothing but soup, roast, and cabbage, for tea only cold meat, and for supper morgen fri."[1]
However, there were Mondays when he did not hear Vassika's voice ordering the piebald to be harnessed, and when his mother met him with a smile and the pleasant tidings that he was not to go to school that day, since the following Thursday would be a
- ↑ German black pudding.
