Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/250

240 was a great deal of life and animation in his face. It was evident that he did not spend his time in lethargy and depression.

'Do you know what I am going to do?' said Platonov.

'What?' asked Vassily.

'Going for a tour about holy Russia with Pavel Ivanovitch here, and perhaps it will rouse me and distract me from my depression.'

'How did you come to settle it so quickly?' Vassily was beginning, genuinely puzzled at such a decision, and he was almost adding: 'And settled to go too with a man you have never seen before, who may be a rascal, and goodness knows what!' And filled with mistrust he looked askance at Tchitchikov, and saw that he was still standing with perfect decorum, still politely holding his head a little on one side and still maintaining the respectfully affable expression on his face, so that it was impossible to say what kind of a man he was.

In silence the three gentlemen walked along the road, on the left of which was the white church of which they had caught glimpses between the trees, and on the right, the buildings of a gentleman's homestead began to come into sight through the trees. At last the gates too came into view. They walked into the yard where there was an old-fashioned high-roofed house. Two immense lime-trees standing in the middle of the yard wrapped almost half of it in their shade. The walls of the house