Dead Souls

But all this in no way produced the intended effect on Chichikov. He was not even looking at the turns produced by the ladies, but was constantly getting on tiptoe to seek over the heads where the engaging blonde might have gotten to; he also crouched down, looking between shoulders and backs, and finally succeeded in his search and spotted her sitting with her mother, above whom some sort of oriental turban with a feather swayed majestically. It seemed as if he wanted to take them by storm; whether it was a spring mood affecting him, or someone was pushing him from behind, in any case he was decidedly pressing forward despite all; the tax farmer got such a shove from him that he staggered and barely managed to keep himself on one leg, otherwise he certainly would have brought down a whole row along with him; the postmaster also stepped back and looked at him with amazement, mingled with rather subtle irony, but he did not look at them; all he saw was the blond girl in the distance, putting on a long glove and undoubtedly burning with desire to start flying over the parquet. And there, to one side, four couples were already jigging away at the mazurka; heels were smashing the floor, and one army staff captain was working body and soul, and arms, and legs, pulling off such steps as no one had ever pulled off before even in a dream. Chichikov slipped past the mazurka almost right on their heels, and made straight for the place where the governor's wife sat with her daughter. However, he approached them very timidly, did not mince his steps so perkily and foppishly, even became somewhat confused, and in all his movements showed a certain awkwardness.

It is impossible to say for certain whether the feeling of love had indeed awakened in our hero—it is even doubtful that gentlemen of his sort, that is, not really fat and yet not really thin, are capable of love; but for all that there was something strange here, something of a sort he could not explain to himself: it seemed to him, as he himself confessed later, that the whole ball with all its talk and noise had for a few moments moved as if to somewhere far away; fiddles and trumpets were hacking out somewhere beyond the mountains and everything was screened by a mist, resembling a carelessly daubed field in a painting. And on this hazy, haphazardly sketched field nothing stood out in a clear and finished way except the fine features of the engaging blonde: her ovally rounding little face, her slender, slender waist, such as boarding-school girls have for the first few months after graduation, her white, almost plain dress, lightly and nicely enveloping everywhere her young, shapely limbs, which were somehow purely outlined. All of her seemed to resemble some sort of toy, cleanly carved from ivory; she alone stood out white, transparent and bright against the dull and opaque crowd.

Evidently it can happen in this world; evidently the Chichikovs, too, for a few moments of their lives, can turn into poets; but the word "poet" would be too much here. In any case, he felt himself altogether something of a young man, all but a hussar. Seeing an empty chair beside them, he at once occupied it. The conversation faltered at first, but then things got going, and he even began to gather strength, but. . . here, to our profound regret, it must be observed that men of dignity who occupy important posts are somehow a bit heavy in their conversation with ladies; the experts here are gentlemen lieutenants or at least those of no higher rank than captain. How they do it, God only knows: the man seems to be saying nothing very clever, yet the girl keeps rocking with laughter in her chair; while a state councillor will talk about God knows what: he will speak of Russia being a very vast country, or deliver a compliment certainly not conceived without wit, but smacking terribly of books; and if he does say something funny, he himself will laugh incomparably more than she who is listening to him. This observation is made here so that the reader may see why the blond girl began to yawn while our hero talked. Our hero, however, did not notice it at all, telling a multitude of pleasant things, which he had already had the chance to utter on similar occasions in various places: namely, in Simbirsk province, at Sophron Ivanovich Bespechny's, where his daughter Adelaida Sophronovna then happened to be, with her three sisters-in-law—Marya Gavrilovna, Alexandra Gavrilovna, and Adelheida Gavrilovna; at Fyodor Fyodorovich Perekroev's in Ryazan province; at Frol Vassilievich Pobedonosny's in Penza province, and at his brother Pyotr Vassilievich's, where were his sister-in-law Katerina Mikhailovna and her second cousins Rosa Fyodorovna and Emilia Fyodorovna; in Vyatka province at Pyotr Varsonofievich's, where Pelageya Yegorovna, his daughter-in-law's sister, was with her niece Sofya Rostislavovna and two half sisters, Sofya Alexandrovna and Maklatura Alexandrovna.