Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/243

Rh relish and, stroking his beard, say: 'We'll try him, Alexey Ivanovitch.' Even the shopmen, who usually stood hat in hand at such times, looked at one another delighted, and seemed as though they would say: 'Alexey Ivanovitch is a splendid man!' In short, he had succeeded in gaining great popularity and it was the opinion of the merchants, that though Alexey Ivanovitch 'does take his share he never gives you away.'

Observing that the savouries were ready, the police-master suggested that they should finish their game after lunch, and they all trooped into the room, the smell issuing from which had begun some time previously to tickle their noses agreeably, and in at the door of which Sobakevitch had for some time been peeping, having noted from a distance the sturgeon lying on a big dish. After drinking a glass of a dark vodka, of that olive colour which is only seen in the transparent Siberian stones of which seals are carved in Russia, the guests approached the table from all sides, with forks in their hands, and began to display, as the saying is, each his character and propensities, one falling on the caviare, another on the dried salmon, another on the cheese. Sobakevitch, paying no attention to all these trifles, established himself by the sturgeon, and while the others were drinking, talking and eating, he in a little over a quarter of an hour had made his way through it, so that when the police-master recollected it, and saying: 'And what do you think, gentlemen, of this product of nature?'