Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/283

Rh to be even better than the breeches, there was not a wrinkle, it fitted tightly on both sides and flared out at the waist, showing off the smart curve of his figure. On Tchitchikov's remarking that it cut him a little under the left armpit, the tailor merely smiled: that made it set still better on the figure.

'Set your mind at rest as regards the cut, set your mind at rest,' he repeated with undisguised triumph, 'there is not a cut like that anywhere but in Petersburg.'

The tailor himself came from Petersburg and had put up on his sign-board: "Foreign tailor from London and Paris." He was not fond of doing things by halves, and wanted to ram both cities at once down the throats of other tailors, so that for the future no one should display those names, but might simply write themselves down as coming from some paltry 'Carlsruhe' or 'Copenhagen.'

Tchitchikov paid the tailor with magnanimous liberality, and left alone, began scrutinising himself at his leisure in the looking-glass with the eye of an artist, with aesthetic emotion and con amore. It seemed to make everything even better than before: his cheeks looked more interesting, his chin more alluring, the white collar gave a tone to the cheeks, the dark-blue satin cravat gave a tone to the collar; the new-fashioned fold of the shirt-front gave a tone to the cravat, the rich velvet waistcoat gave a tone to the shirt-front, and the coat of the 'smoke and flame of Navarino,'