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her ignorance of the art of managing them--but to the coming political
revolution in France and the direction in which fashionable
Catholicism was supposed to be moving? But away with such things! Why
need we speak of them? Yet how comes it that suddenly into the midst
of our careless, frivolous, unthinking moments there may enter
another, and a very different, tendency?--that the smile may not have
left a human face before its owner will have radically changed his or
her nature (though not his or her environment) with the result that
the face will suddenly become lit with a radiance never before seen
there? . . .

"Here is the britchka, here is the britchka!" exclaimed Chichikov on
perceiving that vehicle slowly advancing. "Ah, you blockhead!" he went
on to Selifan. "Why have you been loitering about? I suppose last
night's fumes have not yet left your brain?"

To this Selifan returned no reply.

"Good-bye, madam," added the speaker. "But where is the girl whom you
promised me?"

"Here, Pelagea!" called the hostess to a wench of about eleven who was
dressed in home-dyed garments and could boast of a pair of bare feet
which, from a distance, might almost have been mistaken for boots, so
encrusted were they with fresh mire. "Here, Pelagea! Come and show
this gentleman the way."

Selifan helped the girl to ascend to the box-seat. Placing one foot
upon the step by which the gentry mounted, she covered the said step
with mud, and then, ascending higher, attained the desired position
beside the coachman. Chichikov followed in her wake (causing the
britchka to heel over with his weight as he did so), and then settled
himself back into his place with an "All right! Good-bye, madam!" as
the horses moved away at a trot.

Selifan looked gloomy as he drove, but also very attentive to his
business. This was invariably his custom when he had committed the
fault of getting drunk. Also, the horses looked unusually
well-groomed. In particular, the collar on one of them had been neatly
mended, although hitherto its state of dilapidation had been such as
perennially to allow the stuffing to protrude through the leather. The
silence preserved was well-nigh complete. Merely flourishing his whip,
Selifan spoke to the team no word of instruction, although the
skewbald was as ready as usual to listen to conversation of a didactic
nature, seeing that at such times the reins hung loosely in the hands
of the loquacious driver, and the whip wandered merely as a matter of
form over the backs of the troika. This time, however, there could be
heard issuing from Selifan's sullen lips only the uniformly unpleasant
exclamation, "Now then, you brutes! Get on with you, get on with you!"
The bay and the Assessor too felt put out at not hearing themselves
called "my pets" or "good lads"; while, in addition, the skewbald came
in for some nasty cuts across his sleek and ample quarters. "What has
put master out like this?" thought the animal as it shook its head.
"Heaven knows where he does not keep beating me--across the back, and

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