First Night
“Yes, I was sired by Liubeznuï I . Baba was my dam. According to the genealogy my name is Muzhik I . Muzhik I , I am according to my pedigree; but generally I am known as Kholstomír, on account of a long and glorious gallop, the like of which never took place in Russia. In lineage no horse in the world stands higher than I, for good blood. I would never have told you this. Why should I? You would never have known me as Viazopúrikha knew me when we used to be together at Khrénova, and who only just now recognized me. You would not have believed me had it not been for Viazopúrikha’s witness, and I would never have told you this. I do not need the pity of my kind. But you insisted upon it. Well, I am that Kholstomír whom the amateurs are seeking for and cannot find, that Kholstomír whom the count himself named, and whom he let go from his stud because I outran his favorite ‘Lebedi.’
“When I was born I did not know what they meant when they called me a piebald; I thought that I was a horse. The first remark made about my hide, I remember, deeply surprised me and my dam.
“I must have been foaled in the night. In the morning, licked clean by my dam’s tongue, I stood on my legs. I remember all my sensations, and that everything seemed to me perfectly wonderful, and, at the same time, perfectly simple. Our stalls were in a long, warm corridor, with latticed gates, through which nothing could be seen.
“My dam tempted me to suckle; but I was so innocent as yet that I bunted her with my nose, now under her forelegs, now in other places. Suddenly my dam gazed at the latticed gate, and, throwing her leg over