Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/171

Rh German and in a kapor!' said Petrushka, by way of a gibe at Selifan, and he grinned. But a queer face he made when he grinned! And there was not the slightest semblance of a grin, he looked like a man who has caught a bad cold and is trying to sneeze but cannot sneeze, and remains with a fixed expression of trying to sneeze.

Tchitchikov looked up into his face from below to see what was going on and said to himself: 'He is a pretty fellow and thinks he is handsome too!' Pavel Ivanovitch, it must be explained, was genuinely convinced that Petrushka was in love with his own looks, though as a matter of fact the latter at times completely forgot that he had a face at all.

'You ought, Pavel Ivanovitch,' said Selifan, turning round from the box, 'to have thought to ask Andrey Ivanovitch to give you another horse in exchange for the dappled grey here; he is so friendly disposed to you he wouldn't have refused you, and this horse is simply a rascally beast, and only a hindrance.'

'Get on, get on, don't chatter,' said Tchitchikov, while he thought to himself, 'Yes, it really is a pity I didn't think of it.'

The lightly moving carriage raced along easily meanwhile. It ran lightly up the hills, though the road was rough in parts, and lightly down hill, though there were steep descents in the cross roads. They were going down hill. The road passed by meadows, across bends of the