Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/157

Rh salted dishes and other stimulating dainties; then all proceeded to the dining-room; the hostess sailed in at their head like a goose swimming. The small table was laid for four. In the fourth place there very shortly appeared—it is hard to say definitely who—whether a married lady, or a girl, a relation, a housekeeper or simply some one living in the house—a thing without a cap, about thirty years of age, in a bright-coloured handkerchief. There are persons who exist in the world not as primary objects but as incidental spots or specks on objects. They sit in the same place and hold their head immovably; one is almost tempted to take them for furniture and imagine that no word has ever issued from those lips; but in some remote region, in the maids' quarters or the storeroom, it is quite another story!

'The cabbage soup is particularly good to-day,' said Sobakevitch, taking spoonfuls of the soup and helping himself to an immense portion of a well-known delicacy which is served with cabbage soup and consists of sheep's stomach, stuffed with buckwheat, brains and sheep's trotters. 'You won't find a dish like this in town,' he went on, addressing Tchitchikov, 'the devil only knows what they give you there!'

'The governor keeps a good table, however,' said Tchitchikov.

'But do you know what it is all made of? You won't eat it when you do know.'

'I don't know how the dishes were cooked, I