Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/307

Rh with naked boys calling each other to bathe—and last of all perceives what has been put in his nose.

Such was exactly the position of the inhabitants and officials of the town for the first moment. Each one of them stood like a sheep with his eyes starting out of his head. Dead souls, the governor's daughter and Tchitchikov were mixed together in the strangest confusion in their brains; and only later on, after the first stupefaction had passed, they began as it were to disentangle and separate them, they began to demand explanations and to be vexed, seeing that the affair refused to become intelligible. 'What is the meaning of it really, what is the meaning of these dead souls? There is no sense in dead souls, how can one buy dead souls? Who would be such a fool as to accept them? And queer sort of money one would pay for them! And to what purpose, to what use could dead souls be put? And why is the governor's daughter mixed up in it? If he wanted to elope with her, why should he buy dead souls? If he wanted to buy dead souls, why should he run away with the governor's daughter? Does he want to make her a present of these dead souls or what? What nonsensical stories they do spread about the town. What are things coming to when you can hardly turn round before there is some scandal going about you, and not a word of sense in it either. … The story is going about though, so there must be some reason for it. What reason could there be