Dead Souls

Chichikov was a bit taken aback by this rather sharp definition, but then recovered himself and went on:

"Of course, no man is without weaknesses, but the governor, on the other hand, is such an excellent man!"

"The governor is an excellent man?"

"Yes, isn't it true?"

"The foremost bandit in the world!"

"What, the governor a bandit?" said Chichikov, totally unable to understand how the governor could come to be a bandit. "I confess, I would never have thought it," he went on. "But allow me, nevertheless, to observe: his actions are not like that at all, on the contrary, there is even a good deal of softness in him." Here he held up as evidence even the purses embroidered by his own hands, and spoke with praise of the gentle expression of his face.

"And he has the face of a bandit!" said Sobakevich. "Just give him a knife and set him out on the highway—he'll stick it in you, he'll do it for a kopeck! He and the vice-governor—they're Gog and Magog!"[21]

"No, he's not on good terms with them," Chichikov thought to himself. "I'll try talking with him about the police chief: it seems he's a friend of his."

"Anyhow, as for me," he said, "I confess, I like the police chief most of all. He has a direct, open sort of character; there's something simple-hearted in his face."

"A crook!" Sobakevich said very coolly. "He'll sell you, deceive you, and then sit down to dinner with you! I know them all: they're all crooks, the whole town is the same: a crook mounted on a crook and driving him with a crook. Judases, all of them. There's only one decent man there: the prosecutor—and to tell the truth, he, too, is a swine."

After such laudatory, if somewhat brief, biographies, Chichikov saw that there was no point in mentioning any other officials, and remembered that Sobakevich did not like to speak well of anyone.

"Now then, sweetie, let's go and have dinner," Sobakevich's spouse said to him.

"Please!" said Sobakevich.

Whereupon, going up to the table where the hors d'oeuvres were, guest and host fittingly drank a glass of vodka each, and snacked as the whole of Russia snacks in towns and villages—that is, on various pickled things and other savory blessings—and they all flowed into the dining room; at their head, like a gliding goose, swept the hostess. The small table was set for four. The fourth place was very quickly claimed, it is hard to say positively by whom, a lady or a young maid, a relation, a housekeeper, or simply a woman living in the house: something without a bonnet, about thirty years old, in a motley shawl. There are persons who exist in the world not as objects, but as alien specks or spots on objects. They sit in the same place, hold their head in the identical manner, one is ready to take them for furniture and thinks that in all their born days no word has ever passed those lips; but somewhere in the servants' quarters or the pantry it turns out simply—oh-ho-ho!

"The cabbage soup is very good today, my sweet!" said Sobakevich, having slurped up some soup and heaped on his plate an enormous piece of nyanya, a well-known dish served with cabbage soup, consisting of a sheep's stomach stuffed with buckwheat groats, brains, and trotters. "Such nyanya you'll never get in town," he went on, addressing Chichikov, "they'll serve you the devil knows what there!"

"The governor, however, keeps a rather good table," said Chichikov.

"But do you know what it's all made from? You wouldn't eat it if you found out."

"I don't know how it's prepared, I can't judge about that, but the pork cutlets and poached fish were excellent."

"It seemed so to you. I know what they buy at the market. That rascal of a cook, who learned from a Frenchman, buys a cat, skins it, and serves it instead of hare."

"Pah! what an unpleasant thing to say," said Sobakevich's spouse.

"But, sweetie, that's what they do, it's not my fault, that's what they all do. Whatever they've got that's unusable, that our Akulka throws, if I may say so, into the pig bucket, they put into the soup! into the soup! right plop into it!"

"What things you're always telling about at the table!" Sobakevich's spouse objected again.