Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/33

Rh agreeable man; the police-master's wife that he was a most agreeable and most amiable man. Though Sobakevitch rarely said anything good of any one, yet even he, after returning rather late from town, undressing and getting into bed beside his scraggy wife, said to her: 'I spent the evening at the governor's, my love, and dined at the police-master's and made the acquaintance of a collegiate councillor called Pavel Ivanovitch Tchitchikov, a very agreeable man!' To which his spouse responded with: 'H'm,' and kicked him.

Such was the very flattering opinion that was formed of the visitor in the town, and it was maintained until a strange peculiarity and enterprise of his, or, as they say in the provinces, a 'passage,' of which the reader will soon hear more, reduced almost the whole town to utter perplexity.