Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/90

78 strong effect on Nastasya Petrovna. Anyway she brought out, in a voice of supplication almost:

'But why are you in such a terrible rage? If I had known before that you were so hot-tempered I wouldn't have contradicted you.'

'There's nothing to be angry about! The business is not worth a rotten egg, as though I should get in a rage about it!'

'Oh, very well then, I am ready to let you have them for fifteen paper roubles! Only, my good sir, about these contracts, mind, if you should be taking my rye or buckwheat flour or my grain or my carcases, please don't cheat me.'

'No, my good woman, I won't cheat you,' he said, while he wiped away the perspiration that was streaming down his face. He began inquiring whether she had any lawyer in the town or friend whom she could authorise to complete the purchase and do everything necessary.'

'To be sure! The son of the chief priest, Father Kirill, is a clerk in the law-court,' said the old lady. Tchitchikov asked her to write a letter of authorisation to him, and, to save unnecessary trouble, undertook to compose it himself.

'It would be a good thing,' the old lady was thinking to herself meanwhile, 'if he would take my flour and cattle for the government. I must soften his heart: there is some dough left from yesterday evening, so I'll go and tell Fetinya to make some pancakes; it would be a good thing to make an egg turnover too. They make turnovers capitally and it doesn't take long to do.'