"What? Have your legs become so shrunken that you cannot stand for a moment or two? I am worried about something, so you must wait. You have just been lying down in your room, haven't you? Please search for the letter which arrived from the starosta last night. What have you done with it?"
"What letter? I have seen no letter," asserted Zakhar.
"But you took it from the postman yourself?"
"Maybe I did, but how am I to know where you have since placed it?" The valet fussed about among the papers and other things on the table.
"You never know anything," remarked his master. "Look in that basket there. Or possibly the letter has fallen behind the sofa? By the way, the back of that sofa has not yet been mended. Tell the joiner to come at once. It was you that broke the thing, yet you never give it a thought!"
"I did not break it," retorted Zakhar. "It broke of itself. It couldn't have lasted for ever. It was bound to crack some day."
This was a point which Oblomov did not care to contest. "Have you found the letter yet?" he asked.
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