Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/96

84 her visits in witty fashionable society. There she has a field in which to display her intelligence and express the views she has learnt by heart—not ideas of her own, about her household and her estate, both neglected and in disorder, thanks to her ignorance of housekeeping and farming—but those opinions that by fashion's decree interest the town for a whole week, ideas about the political revolution brewing in France and the tendencies of fashionable Catholicism. But enough, enough! Why talk of this? Why is it that even in moments of unthinking careless gaiety a different and strange mood suddenly comes upon one? The smile has scarcely faded from the lips when, even among the same people, one is suddenly another man and already the face shines with a different light.

'Here is the chaise! Here is the chaise!' cried Tchitchikov, seeing his chaise drive up at last. 'Why have you been dawdling about so long, stupid? I suppose the drink you had yesterday has not quite gone off?'

Selifan made no answer to this.

'Good-bye, ma'am! But, I say, where is your little girl?'

'Hey, Pelageya!' said the old lady to a girl of eleven who stood near the steps in a frock of home-dyed linen, with bare legs so coated with fresh mud that at a little distance they might have been taken for boots. 'Show the gentleman the way.'