Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

"Yes, Your Excellency . . . This, Your Excellency, is such a matter, that I'd prefer to keep it a secret..."

"Of course, I understand very well. What a foolish old man! To come up with such foolishness at the age of eighty! And what, how does he look? is he hale? still on his feet?"

"Yes, but with difficulty."

"What a fool! And he's got his teeth?"

"Only two, Your Excellency."

"What an ass! Don't be angry, brother . . . he's an ass..."

"Correct, Your Excellency. Though he's my relative, and it's hard to admit it, he is indeed an ass."

However, as the reader can guess for himself, it was not hard for Chichikov to admit it, the less so since it is unlikely he ever had any uncle.

"So if you would be so good, Your Excellency, as to ...”

"As to give you the dead souls? But for such an invention I'll give them to you with land, with lodgings! Take the whole cemetery! Ha, ha, ha, ha! The old man, oh, the old man! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Made such a fool of! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

And the general's laughter again went echoing all through the general's apartments. [i]

"No, not like that," Chichikov was saying as he found himself again in the midst of the open fields and spaces, "I wouldn't handle it like that. As soon as, God willing, I finish it all happily and indeed become a well-to-do, prosperous man, I'll behave quite differently: I'll have a cook, and a house full of plenty, but the managerial side will also be in order. The ends will meet, and a little sum will be set aside each year for posterity, if only God grants my wife fruitfulness . . .

"Hey, you tomfool!"

Selifan and Petrushka both looked back from the box.

"Where are you going?"

"Just as you were pleased to order, Pavel Ivanovich—to Colonel Koshkarev's," said Selifan.

"And you asked the way?"

"If you please, Pavel Ivanovich, since I was pottering with the carriage, I . . . saw only the general's stableboy . . . But Petrushka asked the coachman."

"What a fool! I told you not to rely on Petrushka: Petrushka's a log."

"It takes no sort of wisdom," said Petrushka, with a sidelong glance, "excepting as you go down the hill you should keep straight on, there's nothing more to it."

"And I suppose you never touched a drop, excepting the home brew? I suppose you got yourself well oiled?"

Seeing what turn the conversation was taking, Petrushka merely set his nose awry. He was about to say that he had not even begun, but then he felt somehow ashamed.

"It's nice riding in a coach, sir," Selifan said, turning around.

"What?"

"I say, Pavel Ivanovich, that it's nice for your honor to be riding in a coach, sir, better than a britzka, sir—less bouncy."

"Drive, drive! No one's asking your opinion."

Selifan gave the horses' steep flanks a light flick of the whip and addressed himself to Petrushka:

"Master Koshkarev, I hear tell, has got his muzhiks dressed up like Germans; you can't figure out from far off—he walks cranelike, same as a German. And the women don't wear kerchiefs on their heads, pie-shaped, like they do sometimes, or headbands either, but this sort of German bonnet, what German women wear, you know, a bonnet—a bonnet, it's called, you know, a bonnet. A German sort of bonnet."

"What if they got you up like a German, and in a bonnet!" Petrushka said, sharpening his wit on Selifan and grinning. But what a mug resulted from this grin! It had no semblance of a grin, but was as if a man with a cold in his nose was trying to sneeze, but did not sneeze, and simply remained in the position of a man about to sneeze.

Chichikov peered into his mug from below, wishing to know what was going on there, and said: "A fine one! and he still fancies he's a handsome fellow!" It must be said that Pavel Ivanovich was seriously convinced that Petrushka was in love with his own beauty, whereas the latter even forgot at times whether he had any mug at all.

"What a nice idea it would be, Pavel Ivanovich," said Selifan, turning around on his box, "to ask Andrei Ivanovich for another horse in exchange for the dapple-gray; he wouldn't refuse, being of friendly disposition towards you, and this horse, sir, is a scoundrel of a horse and a real hindrance."

"Drive, drive, don't babble!" Chichikov said, and thought to himself: "In fact, it's too bad it never occurred to me."

The light-wheeled coach meanwhile went lightly wheeling along. Lightly it went uphill, though the road was occasionally uneven; lightly it also went downhill, though the descents of country roads are worrisome. They descended the hill. The road went through meadows, across the bends of the river, past the mills. Far away flashed sands, aspen groves emerged picturesquely one from behind the other; willow bushes, slender alders, and silvery poplars flew quickly past them, their branches striking Selifan and Petrushka as they sat on their box. The latter had his peaked cap knocked off every moment. The stern servitor would jump down from the box, scold the stupid tree and the owner who had planted it, but never thought of tying the cap on or at least of holding it with his hand, still hoping that maybe it would not happen again. Then the trees became thicker: aspens and alders were joined by birches, and soon a forest thicket formed around them. The light of the sun disappeared. Pines and firs darkled. The impenetrable gloom of the endless forest became denser, and, it seemed, was preparing to turn into night. And suddenly among the trees—light, here and there among the branches and trunks, like a mirror or like quicksilver. The forest began to brighten, trees became sparser, shouts were heard—and suddenly before them was a lake. A watery plain about three miles across, with trees around it, and cottages behind them. Some twenty men, up to their waists, shoulders, or chins in water, were pulling a dragnet towards the opposite shore. In the midst of them, swimming briskly, shouting, fussing enough for all of them, was a man nearly as tall as he was fat, round all around, just like a watermelon. Owing to his fatness he might not possibly drown, and if he wanted to dive, he could flip over all he liked, but the water would keep buoying him up; and if two more men had sat on his back, he would have gone on floating with them like a stubborn bubble on the surface of the water, only groaning slightly under the weight and blowing bubbles from his nose and mouth.

"That one, Pavel Ivanovich," said Selifan, turning around on the box, "must be the master, Colonel Koshkarev."

"Why so?"

"Because his body, if you'll be pleased to notice, is a bit whiter than the others', and he's respectably portly, as a master should be."

The shouts meanwhile were getting more distinct. The squire-watermelon was shouting in a ringing patter:

"Hand it over, Denis, hand it over to Kozma! Kozma, take the tail from Denis! You, Big Foma, push there along with Little Foma! Go around to the right, the right! Stop, stop, devil take you both! You've got me tangled in the net! You've caught me, I tell you, damn it, you've caught me by the navel!"

The draggers on the right flank stopped, seeing that an unforeseen mishap had indeed occurred: the master was caught in the net.

"Just look," Selifan said to Petrushka, "they've dragged in the master like a fish."

The squire floundered and, wishing to disentangle himself, turned over on his back, belly up, getting still more tangled in the net. Fearful of tearing it, he was floating together with the caught fish, only ordering them to tie a rope around him. When they had tied a rope around him, they threw the end to shore. Some twenty fishermen standing on the shore picked it up and began carefully to haul him in. On reaching a shallow spot, the squire stood up, all covered with the meshes of the net, like a lady's hand in a net glove in summer—looked up, and saw the visitor driving onto the dam in his coach. Seeing the visitor, he nodded to him. Chichikov took off his cap and bowed courteously from his coach.