Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/17

Rh somewhat dirty; the upper storey had been painted the invariable yellow tint; in the basement there were shops with horse-collars, ropes, and bread-rings. In the corner one of these shops, or rather in the window of it, there was a man who sold hot spiced drinks, with a samovar of red copper and a face as red as his samovar, so that from a distance one might have imagined that there were two samovars in the window, if one of them had not had a beard as black as pitch.

While the new-comer was inspecting his room, his luggage was carried up: first of all, a portmanteau of white leather, somewhat worn and evidently not on its first journey. The portmanteau was brought in by his coachman Selifan, a little man in a sheepskin, and his footman Petrushka, a fellow of thirty, somewhat sullen looking, with very thick lips and nose, wearing a rather shabby loose frock-coat that had evidently been his master's. After the portmanteau they carried up a small mahogany chest inlaid with hard birch, a pair of boot-trees, and a roast fowl wrapped up in blue paper. When all this had been brought in, the coachman Selifan went to the stables to look after the horses, while the footman Petrushka proceeded to instal himself in a little lobby, a very dark little cupboard, into which he had already conveyed his overcoat and with it his own peculiar odour, which was communicated also to the sack containing various articles for his flunkey toilet, which he brought up next. In this cupboard he put up against the wall a narrow three-legged bedstead, covering it with a