Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/244

232 went up, fork in hand, with others of the company towards it, he saw that nothing was left of the product of nature but its tail, while Sobakevitch effaced himself, and as though it were not his doing, went up to a dish at a little distance from the rest, and stuck his fork into some little dried fish. Having had enough with the sturgeon, Sobakevitch sat down in an easy-chair, ate and drank nothing more; he simply frowned and blinked. The police-master was apparently not given to sparing the wine; the toasts were innumerable. The first toast was, as the reader can probably guess for himself, drunk to the health of the new Kherson landowner, then to the prosperity of his peasants and their successful settlement in their new home, then to the health of that fair lady, his future bride, which elicited an agreeable smile from our hero. The company surrounded him on all sides and began earnestly pleading with him to remain with them, if only for another fortnight: 'Come, Pavel Ivanovitch! say what you will, to go off like this, it's just cooling the hut for nothing, as the saying is: coming to the door and going back again! Come, you must stay a little time with us! We'll make a match for you. We will, Ivan Grigoryevitch, won't we, we'll make a match for him?'

'We will, we will,' the president agreed. 'You may struggle hand and foot, but we will marry you all the same! No, my good sir, once you are here, it is no good your complaining. We are not to be trifled with.'