Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/162

152 "What do you want?" "Ah," said they, "so that's your line! "And with that they put on quite a different face and countenance. … "We have come on business! How much spirit is being distilled on the estate? Show us your books." The German did not know what to do. They called in witnesses. They bound his arms and took him away to the town, and for a year and a half he lay in prison.'

'Upon my soul!' said the general.

Ulinka clasped her hands.

'His wife did all she could,' Tchitchikov went on. 'But what can an inexperienced young woman do? Luckily some kind people turned up who advised her to settle it amicably. He got off for two thousand roubles and a dinner to the officials. And at dinner when they were all rather exhilarated, and he also, they said to him—"Aren't you ashamed now of the way you treated us? You wanted us shaven and well got up in our dress-coats: no, you love us dirty, for any one will love us clean."'

The general went off into a roar of laughter, Ulinka gave a moan of distress.

'I don't understand how you can laugh!' she said quickly. Her lovely brow was darkened by wrath. … 'It was a most disgraceful action for which they ought all to have been sent, I don't know where. …'

'My dear, I don't in the least justify them,' said the general, 'but what's to be done if it is funny? How did it go?" Love us clean …"?'