Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/223

Rh language. "Where is your passport?" "I did have it," you answer promptly, "but maybe I dropped it on the road." "And why," asks the police-captain, again throwing in a little strong language, "have you carried off a soldier's overcoat and the priest's box with coppers in it?" "Never yet," you say, without turning a hair, "have I been mixed up in any sort of dishonesty." "Then how is it they found the overcoat in your possession?" "I can't say: somebody else must have brought it." "Ah, you brute, you brute," says the police-captain shaking his head, with his arms akimbo. "Rivet fetters on his legs and take him to prison." "By all means, I'll go with pleasure," you answer. And then, taking a snuff-box out of your pocket, you genially offer it to the two veterans who are putting on your fetters, and ask them how long they have left the army and what wars they were in. And then you settle down in prison till your case comes on for trial. And the judge orders that you are to be taken from Tsarevo-Kokshaisk prison to the prison of some other town, and from there the court sends you on to Vesyegonsk, and you move about from prison to prison, and say when you have inspected your new abode: "Well, the Vesyegonsk prison is smarter; there is room even for a game of skittles there, and there's more company."

'Abakum Fyrov! What about you, my boy? where are you wandering now? Have you drifted to the Volga, fallen in love with the free life and