United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Slipping from the box, he stood resting his hands against the side of the britchka, while Chichikov tumbled and floundered about in the mud, in a vain endeavour to wriggle clear of the stuff. "Ah, you!" said Selifan meditatively to the britchka. "To think of upsetting us like this!" "You are as drunk as a lord!" exclaimed Chichikov. "No, no, barin. Drunk, indeed? Why, I know my manners too well.
Selifan flourished his whip and shouted, "Hi, hi!" as the inequalities of the road jerked him vertically on his seat; and meanwhile, reclining against the leather cushions of the vehicle's interior, Chichikov smiled with gratification at the sensation of driving fast. For what Russian does not love to drive fast?
And the old man departed, leaving Chichikov plunged in thought. Once more had the gravity of life begun to loom large before him. "Yes, Murazov was right," he said to himself. "It is time that I were moving." Leaving the prison a warder carrying his effects in his wake he found Selifan and Petrushka overjoyed at seeing their master once more at liberty. "Well, good fellows?" he said kindly.
He gazed about him on every side, but the darkness was too dense for the eye to pierce. "Selifan!" he exclaimed, leaning forward in the britchka. "What is it, barin?" replied the coachman. "Can you see the country house anywhere?" "No, barin." After which, with a flourish of the whip, the man broke into a sort of endless, drawling song. In that song everything had a place.
"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.
Plucking up courage, Chichikov gave orders for the britchka to be righted, and the horses to be urged forward; and since a Russian driver has at least this merit, that, owing to a keen sense of smell being able to take the place of eyesight, he can, if necessary, drive at random and yet reach a destination of some sort, Selifan succeeded, though powerless to discern a single object, in directing his steeds to a country house near by, and that with such a certainty of instinct that it was not until the shafts had collided with a garden wall, and thereby made it clear that to proceed another pace was impossible, that he stopped.
"Paul Ivanovitch," he said, "the horses require shoeing." "Blockhead!" exclaimed Chichikov. "Why did you not tell me of that before, you damned fool? Was there not time enough for them to be shod?" "Yes, I suppose there was," agreed Selifan. "Also one of the wheels is in want of a new tyre, for the roads are so rough that the old tyre is worn through.
"Back out, you rook of Nizhni Novgorod!" the strangers' coachman shouted. Selifan tightened his reins, and the other driver did the same. The horses stepped back a little, and then came together again this time getting a leg or two over the traces. In fact, so pleased did the skewbald seem with his new friends that he refused to stir from the melee into which an unforeseen chance had plunged him.
"Tut, tut, tut!" came in a shout from Chichikov. "Hi, Selifan!" "What is it?" came the reply, uttered with a drawl. "What is it? Why, how dare you drive like that? Come! Bestir yourself a little!"
Indeed, so engrossed was he that he never noticed that his coachman, elated with the hospitality of Manilov's domestics, was making remarks of a didactic nature to the off horse of the troika , a skewbald. "Ah, you rascal, you rascal! I'll get the better of you!" ejaculated Selifan as he sat up and gave the lazy one a cut with his whip. "YOU know your business all right, you German pantaloon!
Word Of The Day