Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/269

Rh in doing so first, there was very nearly an unpleasant scene, and such forwardness seemed positively revolting to many who had been desirous of doing the same.

Tchitchikov was so absorbed in his conversation with the ladies, or to be more accurate, the ladies so engrossed and overwhelmed him with their conversation, interspersing a number of ingenious and subtly allegorical remarks—his brow was perspiring with the effort to interpret their meaning—that he forgot the rules of good manners and did not go up first to his hostess. He thought of this only when he heard the voice of the governor's wife who had been standing before him for some minutes. The lady, shaking her head archly, said in a rather caressing and insinuating voice: 'Ah, so this is where you are, Pavel Ivanovitch!' I cannot accurately reproduce the lady's words, but something was said, full of the greatest politeness, in the style in which ladies and gentlemen express themselves in the works of the society novelists who devote themselves to describing drawing-rooms and pride themselves on their knowledge of aristocratic manners, something in the style of—'Have they taken such possession of your heart that you have no room left in it, not even the tiniest corner for those you have so mercilessly forgotten?' Our hero instantly faced about to the governor's wife, and was on the point of making a reply, probably in no way inferior to those uttered by the Zvonskys, the Linskys, the Lidins, the Gremins and all