Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/122

110 'Ough, you duffer! Can't one be at a fair and yet buy land? I was at the fair and while I was away my steward bought it for me.'

'But how could the steward?' said his brother-in-law; but at that moment he looked dubious and shook his head.

The visitors returned to the house by the same disgusting road. Nozdryov led them to his study, in which however there was nothing commonly seen in studies, such as books or papers; on the walls there hung swords and two guns, one that had cost three hundred and the other eight hundred roubles. The brother-in-law after examining them merely shook his head. Then they were shown some Turkish daggers, on one of which there had been engraved by mistake: Made by Savely Sibiryakov. Then the friends were shown a barrel-organ. Nozdryov immediately turned the handle. The barrel-organ played not unpleasantly, but something seemed to go wrong with it in the middle, for the mazurka ended up with the song, 'Marlbrook s'en va-t-en guerre,' and Marlbrook wound up unexpectedly with an old familiar waltz. Nozdryov had left off turning, but there was one pipe in the organ that was very irrepressible and, unwilling to be silenced, went on for a long time fluting by itself.

Then they were shown pipes made of wood, of clay, or of meerschaum, smoked and unsmoked, wrapped up in chamois leather and not wrapped up, a chibouk with an amber mouthpiece lately won at cards, a tobacco pouch embroidered by a