Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/159

Rh it's all wrong, it's all their fancies, it's all …' Here Sobakevitch shook his head wrathfully. 'They talk of enlightenment, enlightenment, and this enlightenment is … faugh! I might use another word for it but it would be improper at the dinner table. It is not like that in my house. If we have pork we put the whole pig on the table, if it's mutton, we bring in the whole sheep, if it's a goose, the whole goose! I had rather eat only two dishes, and eat my fill of them.' Sobakevitch confirmed this in practice; he put half a saddle of mutton on his plate, and ate it all, gnawing and sucking every little bone.

'Yes,' thought Tchitchikov, 'the man knows what's what.'

'It's not like that in my house,' said Sobakevitch, wiping his fingers on a dinner napkin, 'I don't do things like a Plyushkin: he has eight hundred souls and he dines and sups worse than any shepherd.'

'Who is this Plyushkin?' inquired Tchitchikov.

'A scoundrel,' answered Sobakevitch. 'You can't fancy what a miser he is. The convicts in prison are better fed than he is: he has starved all his servants to death …'

'Really,' Tchitchikov put in with interest.

'And do you actually mean that his serfs have died in considerable numbers?'

'They die off like flies.'

'Really, like flies? Allow me to ask how far away does he live?'

'Four miles.'