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"Do you, or do you not, intend to finish the game?" said Nozdrev. "Give me a direct answer." "No; it will not be possible to finish the game," replied Chichikov, glancing out of the window. He could see his britchka standing ready for him, and Selifan evidently awaiting orders to draw up to the entrance steps.
Arrived at the inn, our hero continued babbling awhile about a flaxen-haired damsel with rosy lips and a dimple in her right cheek, about villages of his in Kherson, and about the amount of his capital. Nay, he even issued seignorial instructions that Selifan should go and muster the peasants about to be transferred, and make a complete and detailed inventory of them.
Speeches like that you may address to your servants, but not to me." At this point Chichikov, without waiting for Nozdrev's reply, seized his cap, slipped behind the Superintendent's back, rushed out on to the verandah, sprang into his britchka, and ordered Selifan to drive like the wind.
"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 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.
"And now we must pack and be off." "True, true, Paul Ivanovitch," agreed Selifan. "And by this time the roads will have become firmer, for much snow has fallen. Yes, high time is it that we were clear of the town. So weary of it am I that the sight of it hurts my eyes." "Go to the coachbuilder's," commanded Chichikov, "and have sledge-runners fitted to the koliaska."
And indeed, Selifan had long been sitting with half-closed eyes, and hands which bestowed no encouragement upon his somnolent steeds save an occasional flicking of the reins against their flanks; whilst Petrushka had lost his cap, and was leaning backwards until his head had come to rest against Chichikov's knees a position which necessitated his being awakened with a cuff.
Yet even from this source very little was obtained, since Petrushka provided his interrogators merely with a taste of the smell of his living-room, and Selifan confined his replies to a statement that the barin had "been in the employment of the State, and also had served in the Customs."
Yet he issued stripped of all his capital, stripped of his imported effects, stripped of everything. That is to say, all that remained to him consisted of ten thousand roubles which he had stored against a rainy day, two dozen linen shirts, a small britchka of the type used by bachelors, and two serving-men named Selifan and Petrushka.
Disagreeably shocked, our hero hastened to raise the hood of the vehicle, to draw the curtains across the windows, and to lean back into a corner. While the britchka remained thus halted Selifan and Petrushka, their caps doffed, sat watching the progress of the cortege, after they had received strict instructions not to greet any fellow-servant whom they might recognise.
On hearing that he was to pass two turnings, and then to take a third, Selifan remarked, "We shall get there all right, sir," and Chichikov departed amid a profound salvo of salutations and wavings of handkerchiefs on the part of his host and hostess, who raised themselves on tiptoe in their enthusiasm. For a long while Manilov stood following the departing britchka with his eyes.
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