PART II
5. CHAPTER V.
(continued)
But he had hardly become conscious of this curious phenomenon,
when another recollection suddenly swam through his brain,
interesting him for the moment, exceedingly. He remembered that
the last time he had been engaged in looking around him for the
unknown something, he was standing before a cutler's shop, in the
window of which were exposed certain goods for sale. He was
extremely anxious now to discover whether this shop and these
goods really existed, or whether the whole thing had been a
hallucination.
He felt in a very curious condition today, a condition similar
to that which had preceded his fits in bygone years.
He remembered that at such times he had been particularly
absentminded, and could not discriminate between objects and
persons unless he concentrated special attention upon them.
He remembered seeing something in the window marked at sixty
copecks. Therefore, if the shop existed and if this object were
really in the window, it would prove that he had been able to
concentrate his attention on this article at a moment when, as a
general rule, his absence of mind would have been too great to
admit of any such concentration; in fact, very shortly after he
had left the railway station in such a state of agitation.
So he walked back looking about him for the shop, and his heart
beat with intolerable impatience. Ah! here was the very shop, and
there was the article marked 60 cop." "Of course, it's sixty
copecks," he thought, and certainly worth no more." This idea
amused him and he laughed.
But it was a hysterical laugh; he was feeling terribly oppressed.
He remembered clearly that just here, standing before this
window, he had suddenly turned round, just as earlier in the day
he had turned and found the dreadful eyes of Rogojin fixed upon
him. Convinced, therefore, that in this respect at all events he
had been under no delusion, he left the shop and went on.
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