Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/257

Rh turn-up nose, thin and pale like all Petersburg ladies, and tastefully dressed like all Petersburg ladies, came into the room. She was followed by a nurse carrying in her arms a baby, the first fruits of the tender passion of the young married couple. Tchitchikov, of course, went up to the lady at once, and the agreeable way in which he held his head on one side was enough alone, even apart from his courteous greeting, to dispose her in his favour. Then he ran up to the baby, who was on the point of breaking into a howl. Tchitchikov, however, succeeded by the words, 'Agoo, agoo, little darling!', by snapping his fingers and dangling the sardonyx seal on his watch-chain, in luring him into his arms. As soon as he had him in his arms, he began tossing him up in the air and succeeded in evoking a gleeful smile on the baby's face, which delighted both his parents. But either from delight or from some other motive, the baby suddenly misbehaved himself. Madame Lyenitsyn cried out: 'Oh good gracious! he has ruined your coat!'

Tchitchikov looked: the sleeve of his quite new dress-coat was completely spoilt. 'Plague take you, you confounded little imp!' he muttered to himself in his wrath.

Lyenitsyn, his wife and the nurse all ran for eau-de-Cologne; they began wiping him down on all sides.

'It's of no consequence,' said Tchitchikov, 'it is absolutely of no consequence. As though