Dead Souls

Chichikov clinked with everyone. "No, no, again!" said the more enthusiastic ones, and clinked again all around; then they came at him to clink a third time, and so they all clinked a third time. In a short while everyone was feeling extraordinarily merry. The magistrate, who was the nicest of men when he got merry, embraced Chichikov several times, uttering in heartfelt effusion: "My dear soul! my sweetie pie!" and, snapping his fingers, even went around him in a little dance, singing the well-known song: "Ah, you blankety-blank Komarinsky muzhik."[32] After the champagne a Hungarian wine was broached, which raised their spirits still more and made the company all the merrier. Whist was decidedly forgotten; they argued, shouted, discussed everything— politics, even military affairs—expounded free thoughts for which, at another time, they would have whipped their own children. Resolved on the spot a host of the most difficult questions. Chichikov had never felt himself in so merry a mood, already imagined himself a real Kherson landowner, talked of various improvements—the three-field system, the happiness and bliss of twin souls—and began reciting to Sobakevich Werther's letter in verse to Charlotte,[33] at which the man only blinked from his armchair, for after the sturgeon he felt a great urge to sleep. Chichikov himself realized that he was beginning to get much too loose, asked about a carriage, and availed himself of the prosecutor's droshky. The prosecutor's coachman, as it turned out on the way, was an experienced fellow, because he drove with one hand only, while holding up the master behind him with the other. Thus, on the prosecutor's droshky, he reached his inn, where for a long time still he had all sorts of nonsense on the tip of his tongue: a fair-haired bride, blushing and with a dimple on her right cheek, Kherson estates, capital. Selifan was even given some managerial orders: to gather all the newly resettled muzhiks, so as to make an individual roll call of them all personally. Selifan listened silently for quite a while and then walked out of the room, saying to Petrushka: "Go undress the master!" Petrushka started taking his boots off and together with them almost pulled the master onto the floor. But the boots were finally taken off, the master got undressed properly, and after tossing for some time on his bed, which creaked unmercifully, fell asleep a confirmed Kherson landowner. And Petrushka meanwhile brought out to the corridor the trousers and the cranberry-colored tailcoat with flecks, spread them on a wooden clothes rack, and set about beating them with a whip and brush, filling the whole corridor with dust. As he was about to take them down, he glanced over the gallery railing and saw Selifan coming back from the stable. Their eyes met, and they intuitively understood each other: the master has hit the sack, so why not peek in somewhere or other. That same moment, after taking the tailcoat and trousers to the room, Petrushka came downstairs, and the two went off together, saying nothing to each other about the goal of their trip and gabbing on the way about totally unrelated matters. They did not stroll far: to be precise, they simply crossed to the other side of the street, to the house that stood facing the inn, and entered a low, sooty glass door that led almost to the basement, where various sorts were already sitting at wooden tables: some who shaved their beards, and some who did not, some in sheepskin coats, and some simply in shirts, and a few even in frieze greatcoats. What Petrushka and Selifan did there, God only knows, but they came out an hour later holding each other by the arm, keeping a perfect silence, according each other great attention, with mutual warnings against various corners. Arm in arm, not letting go of each other, they spent a whole quarter of an hour going up the stairs, finally managed it and got up. Petrushka paused for a moment before his low bed, pondering the most suitable way of lying down, and then lay down perfectly athwart it, so that his feet rested on the floor. Selifan lay himself down on the same bed, placing his head on Petrushka's stomach, forgetting that he ought not to be sleeping there at all, but perhaps somewhere in the servants' quarters, if not in the stable with the horses. They both fell asleep that same moment and set up a snoring of unheard-of density, to which the master responded from the other room with a thin nasal whistle. Soon after them everything quieted down, and the inn was enveloped in deep sleep; only in one little window was there still light, where lived some lieutenant, come from Ryazan, a great lover of boots by the look of it, because he had already ordered four pairs made and was ceaselessly trying on a fifth. Several times he had gone over to his bed with the intention of flinging them off and lying down, but he simply could not: the boots were indeed well made, and for a long time still he kept raising his foot and examining the smart and admirable turn of the heel.