Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/154

142 observing that it had been washed in cucumber water.

'My love,' Sobakevitch went on, 'let me introduce Pavel Ivanovitch Tchitchikov; I had the honour of making his acquaintance at the governor's and at the police-captain's.'

Feoduliya Ivanovna asked him to sit down, like her husband saying no more than 'Please,' with a motion of her head like an actress in the part of a queen. Then she seated herself upon the sofa, wrapping her merino shawl about her, and sat without moving an eye or an eyebrow.

Tchitchikov again raised his eyes and again saw Kanaris with his thick calves and endless moustaches, Bobelina and the thrush in the cage.

For the space of fully five minutes they all remained silent; the only sound was the tap of the thrush's beak on the cage as he picked up grains from the floor of it. Tchitchikov looked round at the room again and everything in it, everything was solid and clumsy to the last degree and had a strange resemblance to the master of the house. In a corner of the room stood a paunchy walnut bureau on four very absurd legs looking exactly like a bear. The table, the armchairs, the chairs were all of the heaviest and most uncomfortable shape; in short, every chair, every object seemed to be saying, 'I am a Sobakevitch too!' or 'I too am very like Sobakevitch!'

'We were speaking of you last Thursday at Ivan Grigoryevitch's, I mean the president of the court of justice,' said Tchitchikov at last, seeing