The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky

THE breath laboured in Mr Golyadkin's lungs as he positively flew after his fast-retreating enemy. He felt full of a terrifying energy. In spite, however, of this terrifying energy, Mr Golyadkin was quite convinced that a mere mosquito, if one could have existed in such weather in St Petersburg, could quite easily have knocked him down with one of its wings. He felt, moreover, utterly limp and feeble, being carried along by some extraordinary extraneous power, not by his own legs, which on the contrary were collapsing under him and refusing to obey him. Everything, however, might still turn out for the best. ‘Whether it's for the best or the worst,' thought Mr Golyadkin, almost suffocating with the speed of his progress, ‘there's not the slightest doubt now that the game's up; I'm done for, that's settled – signed, sealed, and delivered.'Nevertheless, our hero was as if resurrected, like a man who has endured the battle and snatched the victory, when he succeeded in grasping the overcoat of his adversary, who had already raised one foot to the step of the droshky he had summoned. ‘My dear sir! my dear sir!' Mr Golyadkin senior cried at last to his captive, the ill-bred Mr Golyadkin junior. ‘I hope, my dear sir, that you. '

‘No, no, pray don't hope, don't hope for anything,' Mr Golyadkin's unfeeling adversary answered evasively, as he stood with one foot on the step of the droshky, trying with all his might to get the other over to the farther side of the carriage, waving it vainly in the air, trying to keep his balance and at the same time struggling to wrench his overcoat from the clutch of Mr Golyadkin senior, who for his part clung to it with all the powers nature had endowed him with.