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even where I am tenderer still. Yes, he keeps catching the whip in my
ears, and lashing me under the belly."
"To the right, eh?" snapped Selifan to the girl beside him as he pointed
to a rain-soaked road which trended away through fresh green fields.
"No, no," she replied. "I will show you the road when the time comes."
"Which way, then?" he asked again when they had proceeded a little further.
"This way." And she pointed to the road just mentioned.
"Get along with you!" retorted the coachman. "That DOES go to the
right. You don't know your right hand from your left."
The weather was fine, but the ground so excessively sodden that the
wheels of the britchka collected mire until they had become caked as
with a layer of felt, a circumstance which greatly increased the
weight of the vehicle, and prevented it from clearing the neighbouring
parishes before the afternoon was arrived. Also, without the girl's
help the finding of the way would have been impossible, since roads
wiggled away in every direction, like crabs released from a net, and,
but for the assistance mentioned, Selifan would have found himself
left to his own devices. Presently she pointed to a building ahead,
with the words, "THERE is the main road."
"And what is the building?" asked Selifan.
"A tavern," she said.
"Then we can get along by ourselves," he observed. "Do you get down,
and be off home."
With that he stopped, and helped her to alight--muttering as he did
so: "Ah, you blackfooted creature!"
Chichikov added a copper groat, and she departed well pleased with her
ride in the gentleman's carriage.
CHAPTER IV
On reaching the tavern, Chichikov called a halt. His reasons for this
were twofold--namely, that he wanted to rest the horses, and that he
himself desired some refreshment. In this connection the author feels
bound to confess that the appetite and the capacity of such men are
greatly to be envied. Of those well-to-do folk of St. Petersburg and
Moscow who spend their time in considering what they shall eat on the
morrow, and in composing a dinner for the day following, and who never
sit down to a meal without first of all injecting a pill and then
swallowing oysters and crabs and a quantity of other monsters, while
eternally departing for Karlsbad or the Caucasus, the author has but a
small opinion. Yes, THEY are not the persons to inspire envy.
Rather, it is the folk of the middle classes--folk who at one
posthouse call for bacon, and at another for a sucking pig, and at a
third for a steak of sturgeon or a baked pudding with onions, and who
can sit down to table at any hour, as though they had never had a meal
in their lives, and can devour fish of all sorts, and guzzle and chew
it with a view to provoking further appetite--these, I say, are the
folk who enjoy heaven's most favoured gift. To attain such a celestial
condition the great folk of whom I have spoken would sacrifice half
their serfs and half their mortgaged and non-mortgaged property, with
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