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Updated: June 6, 2025
"You never caught a hare by the hind legs with your hands!" remarked the brother-in-law. "But I DID" reiterated Nozdrev. "However, let me show you the boundary where my lands come to an end." So saying, he started to conduct his guests across a field which consisted mostly of moleheaps, and in which the party had to pick their way between strips of ploughed land and of harrowed.
This remark hurt Chichikov, for at any time he disliked expressions gross or offensive to decency, and never allowed any one no, not even persons of the highest rank to behave towards him with an undue measure of familiarity. Consequently his sense of umbrage on the present occasion was unbounded. "By God, I WOULD hang you!" repeated Nozdrev.
The brother-in-law repeated his excuses again and again without noticing that he had entered the britchka, that it had passed through the gates, and that he was now in the open country. Permissibly we may suppose that his wife succeeded in gleaning from him few details of the fair. "What a fool!" said Nozdrev as, standing by the window, he watched the departing vehicle.
"Had I had another twenty roubles in my pocket," went on Nozdrev, "I should have won back all that I have lost, as well as have pouched a further thirty thousand. Yes, I give you my word of honour on that." "But you were saying the same thing when last I met you," put in the flaxen-haired man. "Yet, even though I lent you fifty roubles, you lost them all."
Yet his plump, healthy-looking cheeks were so robustly constituted, and contained such an abundance of recreative vigour, that a new whisker soon sprouted in place of the old one, and even surpassed its predecessor. In short, Nozdrev was, as it were, a man of incident. Never was he present at any gathering without some sort of a fracas occurring thereat.
So strange and novel seemed the idea that the company stood with faces expressive of nothing but a dumb, dull wonder. That Nozdrev was a notorious liar every one, of course, knew, and that he should have given vent to an idiotic outburst of this sort had surprised no one; but a dead soul well, what was one to make of Nozdrev's reference to such a commodity?
Curiously enough, this is the second time I have heard speak of those souls. True, my husband avers that Nozdrev was lying; yet in his lies there seems to have been a grain of truth." "Well, just think of my state when I heard all this!
"Things having come to their present pass," he reflected, "I had better not linger here I had better be off at once." Getting rid of Nozdrev as soon as he could, he sent for Selifan, and ordered him to be up at daybreak, in order to clean the britchka and to have everything ready for a start at six o'clock. Yet, though Selifan replied, "Very well, Paul Ivanovitch," he hesitated awhile by the door.
In short, they generally begin well, but always end badly. "Rubbish!" said Nozdrev in answer to a further objection on his brother-in-law's part. And, sure enough, no sooner had Nozdrev clapped his cap upon his head than the flaxen-haired man started to follow him and his companion. "But the gentleman has not paid for the vodka?" put in the old woman. "All right, all right, good mother.
But an even more unpleasant surprise was in store for our hero; for whilst the young lady was still yawning as Chichikov recounted to her certain of his past adventures and also touched lightly upon the subject of Greek philosophy, there appeared from an adjoining room the figure of Nozdrev.
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