Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/180

170 'Why, have you come to make fun of me or what?' said Pyetuh, getting angry. 'What do I want with you after dinner?'

'Well, Pyotr Petrovitch,' said the visitor smiling, 'I can assure you I ate nothing at dinner, if that's any comfort.'

'Such a catch we have had, you should have seen it. Such a monstrous sturgeon was landed, and there was no counting the carp.'

'It makes me envious to hear you,' said the visitor. 'Do teach me to enjoy myself as you do.'

'But why be dull? Upon my soul!' said the fat gentleman.

'Why be dull? Because it is dull.'

'You don't eat enough, that is all. You should just try having a proper dinner. It's a new fashion they have invented, being bored; in old days no one was bored.'

'Don't go on boasting! Do you mean to say you have never been bored?'

'Never! And I don't know how it is, but I have not time to be bored. One wakes up in the morning—one has to have one's morning tea, you know, and then there is the steward to see, and then I go fishing and then it is dinner-time; after dinner you have hardly time for a snooze before supper's here, and after that the cook comes up—I have to order dinner for to-morrow. When could I be bored?'

All the while he was talking, Tchitchikov was looking at the visitor.