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Updated: May 8, 2025
Here he started to turn the vehicle round a little and kept on doing so until the britchka capsized on to its side, and Chichikov landed in the mud on his hands and knees. Fortunately Selifan succeeded in stopping the horses, although they would have stopped of themselves, seeing that they were utterly worn out. This unforeseen catastrophe evidently astonished their driver.
For these three weeks past you have been doing nothing at all; yet now, at the last moment, you come here stammering and playing the fool! Do you think I keep you just to eat and to drive yourself about? You must have known of this before? Did you, or did you not, know it? Answer me at once." "Yes, I did know it," replied Selifan, hanging his head. "Then why didn't you tell me about it?"
Beside himself with rage, he prepared to give Selifan the wigging of his life, and, meanwhile, waited impatiently to hear what the delinquent had got to say in his defence. It goes without saying that when Selifan made his appearance in the doorway he had only the usual excuses to offer the sort of excuses usually offered by servants when a hasty departure has become imperatively necessary.
However, as I say, the pair ended by swearing eternal friendship with one another, and making a practice of resorting to the village tavern in company. For Selifan, however, the place had a charm of a different kind.
No, the cause of his agitation was lest the net should break, and the fish escape: wherefore he was urging some additional peasants who were standing on the bank to lay hold of and to pull at, an extra rope or two. "That must be the barin Colonel Koshkarev," said Selifan. "Why?" asked Chichikov.
Yet, should those journals be put to it to name any particular circumstance which justified this eulogy of you, they would be forced to fall back upon the fact that you grew a pair of exceptionally thick eyebrows!" With that Chichikov bid Selifan quicken his pace, and concluded: "After all, it is as well that I encountered the procession, for they say that to meet a funeral is lucky."
Selifan departed, and Chichikov, his ill-humour vented, threw down upon the floor the poignard which he always took with him as a means of instilling respect into whomsoever it might concern, and spent the next quarter of an hour in disputing with a couple of blacksmiths men who, as usual, were rascals of the type which, on perceiving that something is wanted in a hurry, at once multiplies its terms for providing the same.
Also, the body of the britchka is so rickety that probably it will not last more than a couple of stages." "Rascal!" shouted Chichikov, clenching his fists and approaching Selifan in such a manner that, fearing to receive a blow, the man backed and dodged aside. "Do you mean to ruin me, and to break all our bones on the road, you cursed idiot?
Yet their walk did not take them far; it took them only to the other side of the street, and thence into an establishment which immediately confronted the inn. Entering a mean, dirty courtyard covered with glass, they passed thence into a cellar where a number of customers were seated around small wooden tables. What thereafter was done by Selifan and Petrushka God alone knows.
The night is dark and cold," added Selifan. "Hold your tongue, you fool!" exclaimed Chichikov. "Who ARE you, then?" inquired the old woman. "A dvorianin , good mother." Somehow the word dvorianin seemed to give the old woman food for thought. "Wait a moment," she said, "and I will tell the mistress."
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