Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/140

128 room, two sturdy fools of serfs were standing in the doorway.

'So you won't finish the game,' said Nozdryov with a face as hot as fire.

'If you played as an honourable man should … but as it is, I can't.'

'So you can't, you scoundrel! As soon as you see you are losing, you can't! Beat him!' he shouted frantically, turning to Porfiry and Pavlushka, while he caught hold of his cherrywood chibouk. Tchitchikov turned pale as a sheet. He tried to say something, but felt his lips move without uttering a sound.

'Beat him!' cried Nozdryov, dashing forward with the cherrywood chibouk, as hot and perspiring as though he were attacking an impregnable citadel. 'Beat him!' he shouted in the voice with which some desperate lieutenant shouts 'Forward, lads!' to his men, though his hot-headed valour has attained such notoriety that special instructions have been given him to curb it when advancing to the attack. But the lieutenant is stirred by martial ardour, everything whirls round in his head, he has visions of Suvorov and yearns for deeds of heroism. 'Forward, lads!' he shouts, regardless of the fact that he is ruining the plan laid down for the general attack, that innumerable guns are ranged in the embrasure of the impregnable fortress walls that vanish into the skies, that his helpless company will be blown into atoms, and that already the fatal bullet that will still his shouts and close his mouth for ever is