Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/276

264 observe this, as he repeated to her a number of agreeable things, which he had already said on various occasions before in various places, to wit: in the Simbirsk province at Sofron Ivanovitch Bezpetchny's, where there were three young ladies, Adelaida Sofronovna and her three sisters-in-law—Marie Gavrilovna, Alexandra Gavrilovna and Adelheida Gavrilovna; at Fyodor Fyodorovitch Perekroev's in the province of Ryazan; at Frol Vassilyevitch Pobyedonosny's in the province of Penza, and at the house of his brother, Pyotr Vassilyevitch, where were his sister-in-law, Katerina Mihailovna and her second cousins Rosa Fyodorovna and Amilia Fyodorovna; in the province of Vyatka, at the house of Pyotr Varsonofyevitch in the presence of his betrothed's sister, Pelageya Yegorovna and his niece, Sofya Rostislavna and her two half-sisters Sofya Alexandrovna and Maklatura Alexandrovna.

All the ladies were greatly displeased with Tchitchikov's behaviour. One of them purposely walked by him in order to let him see this, and even rather carelessly brushed against the fair charmer with the thick flounce of her dress, and managed so that the end of the scarf that fluttered round her shoulders flapped right into the young lady's face; at the same time a rather biting and malignant observation floated together with the scent of violets from the lips of a lady behind him. But either he really did not hear, or he pretended not to hear, and in either case he did wrong, for one must attach importance