Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/151

Rh 'What a strange fellow this Tyentyetnikov is!' thought Tchitchikov.

'As my chaise is not yet in fit condition,' said Tchitchikov, 'allow me to borrow a carriage from you. I will go and call upon him about ten o'clock to-morrow morning.'

'Good heavens, what a thing to ask!' Everything here is at your disposal, take any carriage you like, everything is at your service.'

They said good-night and went off to bed, not without reflecting each on the other's queerness.

Strange to relate, however, next morning when the carriage was brought round for Tchitchikov and he jumped into it with the lightness almost of a military man, wearing his new dress-coat, white cravat and waistcoat, and rolled off to pay his respects to the general, Tyentyetnikov was thrown into an agitation such as he had not experienced for a long time. The whole current of his ideas which had been slumbering and had grown dull were awakened to restless activity. All the feelings of the idler, who had hitherto been plunged in careless sloth, were suddenly caught up in a nervous tumult. At one moment he sat down on the sofa, then he went to the window, then he took up a book, then he tried to think. A fruitless attempt! A thought would not come into his head. Then he tried to think of nothing at all. A fruitless effort. Fragments of something like thought,