Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

This commotion managed, however, to attract the muzhiks of a village which, fortunately, was not far away. Since such a spectacle is a real godsend for a muzhik, the same as newspapers or his club for a German, a whole multitude of them soon accumulated around the carriages, and there were only old women and small children left in the village. The traces were undone; a few prods in the dapple-gray's muzzle made him back up; in short, they were separated and drawn apart. But whether from the vexation they felt at being parted from their friends, or from sheer cussedness, however much the coachman whipped them, the other horses would not move and stood as if rooted to the spot. The muzhiks' sympathy increased to an unbelievable degree. They vied with each other in offering advice: "Go, Andryushka, take the outrunner, the one on the right, and Uncle Mityai will get up on the shaft horse! Get up there, Uncle Mityai!" Long and lean Uncle Mityai, with his red beard, climbed onto the shaft horse and came to resemble a village belfry, or, better, the crane used to draw water from a well. The coachman lashed the horses, but nothing doing, Uncle Mityai was no help. "Wait, wait!" the muzhiks shouted. "You, Uncle Mityai, get on the outrunner, and let Uncle Minyai get on the shaft horse!" Uncle Minyai, a broad-shouldered muzhik with a beard as black as coal and a belly resembling the giant samovar in which hot punch is brewed for a whole chilled marketplace, eagerly got on the shaft horse, who sagged almost to the ground under him. "Now it'll work!" shouted the muzhiks. "Heat him up; heat him up! wallop him with the whip, that one, the sorrel, why's he wriggling there like a daddy longlegs!" But seeing that it was not going to work and that no heating up helped, Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai together got on the shaft horse, and Andryushka was put on the outrunner. Finally the coachman lost patience and chased away both Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai, and it was a good thing he did, because the horses were steaming as if they had just ripped through a whole stage without stopping for breath. He gave them a minute's rest, after which they went off by themselves. While all this was happening, Chichikov was looking very attentively at the unknown young girl. He made several attempts to converse with her, but somehow it did not come about. And meanwhile the ladies drove off, the pretty head with its fine features and the slender waist disappeared, like something resembling a vision, and what remained was again the road, the britzka, the troika of horses familiar to the reader, Selifan, Chichikov, the flatness and emptiness of the surrounding fields. Wherever in life it may be, whether amongst its tough, coarsely poor, and untidily moldering mean ranks, or its monotonously cold and boringly tidy upper classes, a man will at least once meet with a phenomenon which is unlike anything he has happened to see before, which for once at least awakens in him a feeling unlike those he is fated to feel all his life. Wherever, across whatever sorrows our life is woven of, a resplendent joy will gaily race by, just as a splendid carriage with golden harness, picture-book horses, and a shining brilliance of glass sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly goes speeding by some poor, forsaken hamlet that has never seen anything but a country cart, and for a long time the muzhiks stand gaping open-mouthed, not putting their hats back on, though the wondrous carriage has long since sped away and vanished from sight. So, too, did the blond girl suddenly, in a completely unexpected manner, appear in our story and also disappear. If, instead of Chichikov, some twenty-year-old youth had happened to be standing there, a hussar, or a student, or simply one starting out on his path in life—then, God! what would not have awakened, stirred, spoken up in him! For a long time he would have stood insensibly on the same spot, gazing senselessly into the distance, having forgotten the road, and all the reprimands that lay ahead of him, and the scoldings for the delay, having forgotten himself, and the office, and the world, and all there is in the world.

But our hero was already middle-aged and of a circumspectly cool character. He, too, waxed thoughtful and started thinking, but his reflections were more positive, not so unaccountable, and even in part quite substantial. "A nice wench!" he said, opening his snuffbox and taking a pinch. "But what is it, chiefly, that's so good in her? What's good in her is that, as one can see, she has just come out of some boarding school or institute, there's nothing about her that is female, as they say, which is precisely what is most disagreeable in them. She's like a child now, everything is simple in her, she says what she likes, she laughs when she wants to. Anything can be made of her, she may become a wonder, or she may turn out trash, and trash is what she'll turn out. Just let the mamas and aunties start working on her now. In a year they'll have her so filled with all sorts of female stuff that her own father won't recognize her. Out of nowhere will come conceit and pomposity, she'll start turning around on memorized instructions, she'll start racking her brains thinking up with whom, and how, and for what length of time she should speak, how to look at whom, she'll be afraid every moment of saying more than is necessary, she'll finally get confused, and in the end she'll finally start lying all her life, and the result will be devil knows what!" Here he fell silent for a short time, then added: "And it would be curious to know who her people are, what and who her father is, is he a rich landowner of respectable character or simply a well-meaning man with capital acquired in the service? For if, say, to this girl there were added some two-hundred-thousand-rouble dowry, she would make a very, very tasty little morsel. That might constitute happiness, so to speak, for a decent man." The tidy little two hundred thousand began to picture itself so attractively in his head that he inwardly became vexed with himself for not having found out who the travelers were from the postillion or the coachman, while the bustle around the carriages was going on. Soon, however, the appearance of Sobakevich's estate distracted his thoughts and made them turn to their perennial subject.

The estate seemed rather big to him; two forests, of birch and of pine, like two wings, one darker and one lighter, stood to right and left of it; in the middle could be seen a wooden house with a mezzanine, a red roof, and dark gray or, better, natural sides—a house like those built here for military settlements and German colonists. [18] Colonies of soldier-farmers were first created by the emperor Alexander I (1777-1825), and were placed mainly in Ukraine. The empress Catherine II began the inviting of German settlers to Russia, particularly to the province of Saratov. It was obvious that during its construction the architect had been in constant conflict with the owner's taste. The architect was a pedant and wanted symmetry, the owner wanted convenience and, evidently as a result of that, boarded up all the corresponding windows on one side and in their place poked through one small one, probably needed for a dark storeroom. The pediment was also not at all in the center of the house, however much the architect had struggled, because the owner had ordered a column on one side thrown out, so that instead of four columns, as in the original design, there were only three. The yard was surrounded by a strong and exceedingly stout wooden lattice. The landowner seemed greatly concerned with solidity. For the stable, sheds, and kitchens stout and hefty logs had been used, meant to stand for centuries. The village cottages of the muzhiks were also a marvel of construction: the sides were not adzed, there were no carved patterns or fancywork, but everything was snugly and properly fitted together. Even the well was housed in such strong oak as is used only for gristmills and ships. In short, all that he looked upon was sturdy, shakeless, in some strong and clumsy order. As he drove up to the porch, he saw two faces peek almost simultaneously out the window: a woman's, in a bonnet, narrow, long, like a cucumber; and a man's, round, broad, like those Moldavian gourds called crooknecks, from which balalaikas are made in Russia, light two-stringed balalaikas, the jewel and delight of a snappy twenty-year-old lad, a winker and a fop, winking and whistling at the white-bosomed, white-necked lasses who have gathered to listen to his soft-stringed strumming. Having peeked out, the two faces hid at the same moment. A lackey in a gray jacket with a light blue standing collar came to the porch and led Chichikov into the front hall, where the host himself had already come. Seeing the visitor, he abruptly said: "Please!" and led him to the inner rooms.