Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/69

Rh every minute for the horses to draw the chaise. Tchitchikov was beginning to feel very uneasy at still seeing no sign of Sobakevitch's village. According to his calculations they ought to have arrived long before. He kept looking out on either side, but it was so dark that you could not see your hand before your face.

'Selifan,' he said at last, poking his head out of the chaise.

'What is it, master?' answered Selifan.

'Look out, isn't there a village in sight?'

'No, master, there is nothing in sight anywhere!' After which Selifan, brandishing his whip, struck up—not precisely a song but a sort of long rigmarole without an ending. Everything went into it: all the calls of encouragement and incitement with which horses are regaled all over Russia from one end to the other, adjectives of all kinds without discrimination just as they came first to his tongue. It came at last to his beginning to call them secretaries.

Meanwhile Tchitchikov began to notice that the chaise was swaying in all directions and jolting him violently: this made him aware that they had turned off the road and were probably jolting over a freshly harrowed field. Selifan seemed to perceive this himself but did not say a word.

'Why, you scoundrel, what road are you taking me?' said Tchitchikov.

'I can't help it, sir, it is such weather; there is no seeing the whip, it is so dark!'

As he said this, he gave the chaise such a lurch