Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/71

Rh 'No, your honour, as though I could forget! I know my duty. I know it is not right to get drunk. I had a chat with a good man because …'

'I will give you a thrashing that will teach you to have a chat with a good man.'

'That is as your honour thinks best,' answered Selifan, ready to agree to anything, 'if it's to be a thrashing, a thrashing let it be; I have nothing against it. Why not a thrashing, if it's deserved? That's what you are master for. There must be thrashing, for the peasants are too fond of their ease; order must be kept up. If it's deserved, then thrash, why not thrash?'

His master found absolutely no reply to make to this line of argument. But at that instant it seemed as though fate itself had determined to take pity on them. They heard a dog barking in the distance. Tchitchikov, overjoyed, told Selifan to whip up the horses. The Russian driver has a keen scent that takes the place of eyes; that is how it is he jolts along at full speed with his eyes shut and always arrives somewhere in the end. Though Selifan could not see his hand before his face, he drove the horses so straight to the village that he didn't stop till the shafts of the chaise struck against a fence and he could absolutely drive no further. All Tchitchikov could discern through the thick curtain of streaming rain was something that looked like a roof. He sent Selifan to seek for the gate, an operation which would undoubtedly have taken a long time if it were not that in Russia ferocious dogs do duty for house-porters, and